The days when comic publishers scrabbled for the rights to produce adaptations of the latest Hollywood blockbuster are more-or-less a thing of the past. These days it is far more likely that it will be the film executives battering down the doors of the comic book company attempting to license their properties for the big screen.
This week’s Variety leads with a big story about the next wave of comic-inspired productions to come from Hollywood. It’s not a great news story for two reasons. First it starts off with a rather specious statement about how the next wave of comic films won’t “revolve around men-in-tights. This forgets that there are plenty of non-spandex featuring comic adaptations already in the wild - Ghost World, History of Violence, Road to Perdition, Sin City, 300, Men in Black – many of which are later referred to in the article. And it glosses over the point that there are still plenty of superhero movies to come, both from the big publishers Marvel (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Namor, Luke Cage, The Silver Surfer, Wolverine, Magneto and a fourth X-Men movie are all somewhere in the works, Spider-Man, FF and other franchises are probably not dead either) and DC (who have just refound their feet have Superman and Batman up and running and Wonder Woman, Justice League, and possibly The Green Arrow likely to follow). Even amongst the smaller publishers featured in the Variety article, there is a smattering of spandex tales on the way (Rising Stars & Fathom).
The main failing though, is that the article doesn’t really offer anything new, despite the fact that the recently concluded ComicCon must have been full of potential news. Actually it feels like this was a story written by someone struggling to justify their week of excess in San Diego – and speaking as one journalist to another, I say “fair enough”.
The Variety story is hung on the imminent release of 30 Days of Night based on IDW Publishings stories about vampires descending on an Alaskan town for a serious buffet. It’s directed by David Slade (Hard Candy) will star Josh Hartnett and original comic writer Steve Niles has a share of the screenplay credit.
There are some interesting projects highlighted by the story – though how many of these will languish forever in “development hell” waits to be seen. One shift that might shorten the time in purgatory for some of these projects is the move by Marvel and Oni Press into financing their own movies. Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk will represent Marvel’s first fully self-financed features. Oni have also moved onto this ground as well. The risks are greater, but given that the Spider-man movie trilogy has so far raked in $3 billion worldwide, the rewards look pretty tempting. And the change will give the comic publishers/creators greater say over the development of their properties.
Anyway, here’s a list of what some of the publishers have coming up:
Dark Horse – are old hands at that sort of thing with 300, Hellboy, Mystery Men and The Mask all to their credit, but I suppose there was the echo of a thwack of spandex about all of those. A sequel to 300 is unlikely (301: This Time It’s War! Anyone?) but the Sin City and Hellboy franchises will return. Dark Horse remain one of the most prolific adapters of screen material to comics – with Buffy and Star Wars books their mainstay product.
Oni Press has a film development arm (brilliantly named Closed on Mondays) and has, apparently, a dozen films at various stages of development with a variety of studios. Whiteout – thriller based on a Greg Rucka/Steve Lieber graphic novel – is being produced by Eric Glitter and will be released by Warner Bros – stars Kate Beckinsale solving a murder at the South Pole.
Devil’s Due have a deal with Rogue Pictures and are working on Drafted and Sheena: Queen of the Jungle.
Top Cow published Mark Millar’s brilliant Wanted and the story is under production with Russian director Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Day Watch) signed to direct and James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman. There is also a production of Rising Stars (J. Michael Straczynski’s superhero story) in the works at MGM.
Platinum Studios might not be the biggest player in the comics’ industry but it has the fantastically titled Cowboys & Aliens at Sony, Unique at Disney, Mal Chance at Miramax and Nathan Never at Dreamworks.
Virgin Comics appear to have entered the market with the specific goal of identifying comics that could be transferred to the screen – to the point where a good number of their books are being scripted by film directors – with producing kingpin Joel Silver acting as editor overseeing their director’s cut imprint. Guy Ritchie wrote and will probably direct the adaptation of The Gamekeeper and John Woo (The Brothers), Shekhar Kapur (Snake Woman) are already available and Jonathan Mostow, Terry Gilliam and Nicholas Cage are signed up for the future. Virgin have gone even further, striking a deal with Sci Fi, the US cable channel, the look to develop “cross-platform” properties.
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