"Dallas" messes with Texas

When the director of Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! and Monster-in-Law walks away from your project before filming has even commenced, maybe it's time to re-evaluate what you're doing. Although to take the opposite viewpoint, Robert Luketic really has some balls to walk away from the film adaptation of Dallas no matter how potentially bad it is; once you've done Tad Hamilton, there's really nowhere to go but up. Luketic's opposition to the film apparently springs from some of the casting decisions, and I think I can see why - with John Travolta signed on to play J.R. and Jennifer Lopez as Sue Ellen, the only way to get more prima donna ego on the set would be to add Cowboys below the title and bring in Terrell Owens to play Bobby. Or maybe Kevin Costner would like to read for the Cliff Barnes role?

The second-most important question regarding the film is whether it will be played straight or whether it will take the route of every other 70s-80s TV remake and just camp it up, because it's really annoying and seems kind of pointless to make all your remakes into virtual parodies. On the other hand, the most important question is whether it makes any difference at all, especially with the questionable casting. For example, I don't think being a Scientologist automatically qualifies John Travolta to fill the role of a love-to-hate-him type; have you seen this guy play a villain? Fox ought to take out insurance on its shooting locations in case of teeth marks. Sure, Larry Hagman was never the epitome of subtle, but John Travolta? He's just going to be Gabriel from Swordfish wearing a ten-gallon hat.

Meanwhile, officials in Dallas are apparently desperate to make sure the production films there, which makes sense, because nothing classes your city up like association with a bunch of slimy characters from a primetime soap opera. It really does seem kind of perverse how much civic pride the city takes in the show, but I guess it's understandable when you consider that most people wouldn't even have heard of Dallas otherwise. But that's okay - some cities have famous landmarks, some have centuries of history, and some just have fictional oil barons. To each his own. You know who I feel bad for in all of this, though? The good people of Knots Landing. Their city won't even be considered as a location when someone gets around to making that movie, although that's mostly because it doesn't actually exist.

Sources: Director Quits 'Dallas' Movie (IMDb); 'Shoot J.R. in Dallas,' city tells filmmakers (CBC)