Exclusive: Director Seth Gordon, the man behind the cameras of “Four Christmases” and this weekend’s “Horrible Bosses” still has people talking about his debut feature, the documentary “The King Of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters” four years since it hit theaters. The sleeper sensation was an unlikely hit, tracking Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe as they slugged out to wear the crown as the champion players of Donkey Kong. As funny and at times absurd as that story was, it was also unexpectedly tender and moving, and it’s no surprise that New Line snapped up the rights to remake it into a feature film. And even as Gordon has gone on to work both in film and television on a variety of projects, “King Of Kong” is still a movie people want to talk about and thought movement has slow, we recently caught up with the director who told is it’s still definitely happening.
“Totally. It’s stunning…I think it’s the thing that won’t ever die in a way because I think we all love the doc,” Gordon said, confirming the remake is still being worked on. “And so we haven’t given up on it. And there’s a new draft by [2007 Black List writer] Melissa Stack who did a wonderful job. And so it’s quite real.”
While there has been speculation about where the story may go — at one point it was rumored that it might be a sequel instead of a straight dramatization of the original film — for the style of the film, Gordon has been inspired by the hit shows he’s worked on.
“There’s a few different avenues [the film can take]. I’ve done some work on ‘Modern Family‘ and ‘The Office‘ and have worked in this doc style, and so that inspired me to say, instead of doing a traditional narrative feature script, what if we did the remake in the doc style?,” he explained. “What doors what that open? What opportunities? What additional story could we tell? And that’s essentially the approach we took.”
Still no word yet on when this project will happen, but it’s still percolating and bringing that faux-verité style to the story and putting it up on the big screen is an interesting direction. Next up for Gordon is another remake, this time of the ’80s flick “WarGames” but that one is still at script stage. He told he hopes to get one more film in before that one starts up, and while he was attached earlier this year to the coming-of-age tale “The Only Living Boy In New York” with Logan Lerman to star, he tells us that one still needs financing before it can move forward.
Look for more from our interview with Seth Gordon soon. “Horrible Bosses” is in theaters today.
