JoJo then started with the "Cannonball Run," starring Bruce Willis and Burt Reynolds. According to Meehan, the three actors' performances were actually quite good, but one big problem was that the directors were not able to re-film all of their lines after principal photography ended and after Willis and Reynolds had begun filming their parts of the "Die Hard" sequel. "So all they had were the takes before that," Meehan says, "and it was really difficult to do with Willis and Burt and even me. I did the original one in 1992, and that was great because we were doing the movie and rehearsing through it. But this time, we were like a week behind schedule, and Bruce Willis had already done a couple of days of work on 'Die Hard 4' already when he did 'Cannonball Run,' so he didn't want to re-do his stuff. But we finally got to a place where we could finish the 'Cannonball Run,' so we finished everything. We finished all of the scenes that were already in the can, and we put out what we could from what he was supposed to have done, which made it much easier to recast with somebody else, like Dennis Miller." The biggest problem with the "Cannonball Run" remake was that the film never got the proper advertising it deserved. "We didn't get the right time slot to make any noise for it," Meehan says. "All the ads were just Cannonball guys. Bruce is doing it for six months. Burt is doing it for six months. I'm doing it for three months, so they were all in the same six months. You need to get some hype going because the numbers were so small at some theaters that they didn't play the ad very long. It got shown at AMC or Landmark, but it just didn't catch on that way. The biggest problem was that the people who did advertise it wanted a new Cannonball, so they did an ad like they would do any other movie and they only told you that this is the new guy doing it. We couldn't get them to put out the word that we had an original guy doing it, that it was going to be one of the best movies of the year. It was a difficult movie to market because everybody was used to a new Cannonball, and they were used to the old guy, so they just wanted to know it was going to be a new guy. There was no hype, but we got a lot of fans coming in as the weekend went by because they were telling other people about the new one and their friends told them about the new one, and that's how they found out about it. We had a lot of interest from the audiences, but nobody came to see it until they saw what we had done with it." When asked if he saw other "Cannonball Run" imitators come around, such as the recent "Cannonball Run 20," Meehan had a few words to say about those, too. "People that did a film like this have all gone on and done them again, but they went the way of the original movie. There's a huge amount of money in sequels and movies like that, but when we did this one, we didn't have any ideas about what was going to happen next with it. It was pretty much just based on an idea, and as far as trying to outdo what we did with this movie, you can never be smarter than what you've done in the past, so when you have a hit like that you never want to do another movie that's a remake, because you'll never get close to that. You've got to try something new. But we do think it's a classic, but a lot of people can't separate the two. If they see this movie, they think, 'Oh, there's the original guy,' but it's just not the case. We did something totally different with this one. That's why we never want to do a remake, because there's no way to beat the original." Meehan's second and last movie of 2009 will be "The Proposal," starring Cameron Diaz, and this will also be a remake. The director says that this remake is actually going to be "pretty different." "It's based on a French movie called 'Le Dîner de Cons' (The Dinner Party), which is a kind of satire," he says. "It's about two people that set up a dinner party, but it goes way off track when they try to make plans for another dinner party when they've already had the first one, so this man gets caught up in the craziness of the dinner parties and he realizes they're a mess, and he's having one the night before this dinner party. Then the next night, he doesn't have a date. His wife is away for a while, so he ends up with this woman, who's a younger woman and it turns out to be a young, younger woman. The wife comes home and she ends up getting all upset that she wasn't there and didn't know about it. So the guy is caught in the middle. We're not doing that story, we're doing another story. So that's what makes this different from the French version. It's a different idea. We're actually having fun with the dinner parties because you see them all the time, and this is sort of a horror story about what happens to one of these dinners. It's about these two sisters who haven't seen each other for years. And one of them can't get married, and one of them is a doctor, and it gets very complicated when the one sister has this dinner party for her brother-in-law. What happens is, she's got to invite this guy over to the dinner party who she hasn't seen in years, so he invites his family, and then the sister's husband shows up at the dinner party and something goes wrong, so it goes into a frenzy. So we're not doing the same story, but what we're doing has a similar, sort of dark-comedy feel. It's not a comedy." Meehan does admit that he will miss directing comedies, but now that he has two successful movies under his belt, he will be able to take a break before he starts prepping "The Thing," a sci-fi horror movie starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But the director is already looking forward to all of the opportunities he'll have to do comedy for the rest of his career. ### **Brett Ratner's "Red" Lands at MGM** April 2, 2009 With _GI Joe_ and _X-Men_ , Brett Ratner certainly has solid credentials to produce and direct films. He was not only an associate producer on both films, but he also acted in _X-Men_ and had a major supporting role in the sequel _GI Joe_. Ratner will now be working with MGM. The studio announced the hire today (April 2). Ratner is set to produce and direct "Red," a movie that is the latest in a series that will be part of a trilogy. It has a screenplay by Joe Carnahan (who previously wrote the screenplay for the sci-fi thriller _Strange Days_ with fellow writer J. Michael Straczynski), and will be based on a comic book created by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. The story concerns a mercenary who is hired to kill terrorists, but the job becomes personal when he begins to fall for one of the terrorists, and things escalate out of control. The choice of Ratner to direct the film was obvious. He is best known for his work as a producer and director on _Rush Hour_ , as well as other comedies. He has directed or produced two of the biggest box office hits of the past two years in _X-Men_ and _Hairspray_ , and the other was one of the biggest hits of the last year in _Rush Hour 3_ , but it's not clear whether the latest installment in the Riddick series is a comedy or thriller. "I was asked to direct 'Red' after coming off of working on both _X-Men_ and _Rush Hour 2_ , two of the most successful movies in my career," Ratner said. "I feel very privileged to be asked to direct this movie and hope the result is as good as those were. We were incredibly fortunate that Joe Carnahan was available to write the script. Joe has been part of my film family for years, and I have enormous respect for him. I also want to give a shout out to the awesome artists at Tron: Legacy and Legacy Effects, as well as the incredible folks at MGM for seeing the value in this particular project." Producer Stuart Ford said, "