http://www.blogcdn.com/www.cinematical.com/media/2009/12/warbirds.jpg
I love reading a plot description for an upcoming project that just stops me dead in my tracks. Here I am scanning casually through my RSS feeds when I come across this bombshell of a plot for War Birds at The Hollywood Reporter:
“Birds follows an Air Force veteran-turned-reckless airshow re-enactment pilot as he gets pulled into the underground culture of illegal, real-life aerial combat. Shooting is scheduled for the summer in Michigan using all real airplanes and aerial sequences, including authentic P-51 Mustangs, P-38 Lightnings, F4U Corsairs and a B-17 Flying Fortress as well as modern military helicopters and jets.”
Yes, you read that correctly. War Birds, which will be directed by a one Michael Chait, is like Top Gun meets The Fast and the Furious. Or Fighting meets Stealth. Or *Step up to the Streets 2 *meets Hell’s Angels. I don’t know, there are too many variables there for me to wrap my head around. I’m still stumbling over the idea of a ‘reckless airshow re-enactment pilot’. What does he re-enact, exactly? Famous air-duels? Or does he re-create famous moments of reckless airshow stunts? Whatever the case may be, there is still the mind-blowing matter of “illegal, real-life aerial combat”. At least no one can accuse War Birds of lacking originality, because, by my count, that particular river of gold has gone un-mined by Hollywood for far too long.
And no, despite what the picture above implies, there are (one assumes) zero pterodactyls in Chiatt’s War Birds, which will undergo a script touch up from Bottle Shock writer J. Todd Harris and Tron Legacy writer Richard Jefferies. There are, however, pterodactyls fighting planes in another Warbirds](Warbirds (TV Movie 2008) - IMDb), a Syfy channel movie from 2008, and, honestly, I’m not sure if that sounds any less absurd than the plot for Chait’s War Birds.