Snakes on a Plane: The Reshoots

UNIVERSAL REMOTE

Today has been a wealth of new information about Snakes on a Plane. First the official artwork was revealed, now news of a reshoot. Today's Hollywood Reporter has a lengthy article about the background of the whole historic project as well as the skinny on recent reshoots that were in part a response to the overwhelming interest the movie has generated on the Internets. (I like to think I am part of this. After all, I do own a shirt.) Here's a Good Parts version of the story:

As film backstories go, this one is fairly serpentine. This month, New Line Cinema's Snakes on a Plane, which wrapped principal photography in September in Vancouver, went back before the cameras for five days of additional shooting at the Lot in Los Angeles...

...once production began, a funny thing happened. Movie fans...seized upon the title and started spontaneously creating fan sites, blogs, T-shirts, poems, fiction and songs. The title itself, sometimes abbreviated as SoaP, has emerged as Internet-speak for fatalistic sentiments that range from c'est la vie to "shit happens..."

In any event, Snakes-ophiles already were hard at work. Chris Rohan of Bethesda, Md., created an elaborate, R-rated audio trailer that lovingly mocks the title and movie. "It's a genius title," Rohan said. "It's so stupid it's great. It invites satire, but it's something you just love. It's something I can't explain. You either get it or you don't."

The audio bit uses a (Samuel L.) Jackson sound-alike shouting, "I want these motherf**king snakes off the motherf**king plane!" Soon, the growing legion of fans added their voices as they demanded that that phrase also appear in the movie.

Apparently, the studio got the hint. When (director David R.) Ellis assembled Jackson and others for the recent shoot, the filmmakers added more gore, more death, more nudity, more snakes and more death scenes. And they shot a scene where Jackson does utter the line that fans have demanded...the filmmakers do concede that the Jackson line will be in the movie for the sake of the fans.

Unfortunately I can't for the life of me find the "audio trailer" mentioned in the story. Neverthless, I've never heard of a studio shooting new footage based on fan suggestions. People are going to be cheering when Jackson utters his soon to be immortal line.

I know because I'll be one of them.

UPDATE (6:17 pm): The great Jeffrey Wells chimes and links to a great accoustic riff on the whole SoaP phenomenon. He also did a little digging and provides a priceless bit of info:

A New Line source told me this morning that they've added, for one example, a shot of "a guy being bitten by a snake on his Johnson." How does that happen exactly? He's taking a leak or...? "Mile-High Club," he answered.

He also reports there is a heavy debate about whether to move up SoaP's August release to the heart of the summer like June or July.

"(T)his is not a DVD thing," he writes. "Everyone is going to have to go to a theatre with their friends and bark like seals at the jokes and the shrieks and fangs-sinking-into-penis moments." And you, Daily411 readers, were hip to this from the beginning.

UPDATE (March 26):Here's a link to the aforementioned "audio trailer."

PREVIOUS SNAKES ON A PLANE POSTS:
08/24/05 - Ssssssssssssss.....
10/04/05 - Snakes on a Plane UPDATE
11/08/05 - Snakes on a Plane UPDATE 2
11/24/05 - Snakes on a Plane UPDATE 3
11/30/05 - Snakes on a Plane: The Dialogues
03/17/06 - Snakes on a Plane: The Teaser
03/23/06 - Snakes on a Plane: The Artwork