To assure maximum involvement the director himself became part of the new project playing the role of Caesar alongside French icons Gerard Depardieu and Christian Clavier. The cast to Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra was welcoming one of Europe's new divas, Monica Bellucci, and the buzz was everywhere. It seemed like this time around unlike his predecessor the director and member of the comics group Les Nuls Alain Chabat was taking the challenge very seriously. The Asterix paranoia was again gathering some serious momentum. The sequel to the disastrous first Asterix film was to be named Asterix and Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (Astérix & Obélix: Mission Cléopâtre) and was going to rely on an ambitious cast including some of the best actors France had to offer. In the year 2000, however, a much older fan of the Asterix cartoon-series, director Alain Chabat, stepped up and announced that he was going to head an unprecedented for France and its film industry project that would breathe new life into the Gallic hero this time relying on a record breaking 50 million dollars budget, at the time the largest ever seen by the French film industry. Plans for a possible sequel quickly cooled off and all of a sudden everyone in France agreed that it might be a better idea if Asterix and his comrades were left alone resting in peace. Asterix and Obelix Take on Caesar ( Astérix et Obélix contre César) bombed at the French box-office and left a bitter taste even between the most dedicated fans of the charismatic cartoon character. It was 1999 when director Claude Zidi finally had the courage to put together a workable script which unfortunately for many of Asterix's fans quickly turned out to be a disaster of paramount proportions. In its native France, the superiority that Asterix established was unquestionable. In places as far away as Russia and Australia Asterix gained the love and dedication of millions of kids that were reading his stories. In Europe, the Asterix phenomenon slowly grew bigger and bigger and by the early 1980s the comic hero was rivaling its North American competitors, Superman, Batman, and the Mighty Mouse, quite successfully. In fact, they were so successful that for a number of years film directors did not dare touch the Gallic heroes afraid of disappointing the thousands of passionate fans around the world with an inadequate adaptation. For generations of Frenchmen Asterix, Cleopatra, and the rest of the cartoon characters created in the early 1960s by Alberto Uderzo (cartoonist) and Rene Goscinny (scriptwriter) hold some dear memories.
0 kommentar(er)
