Because I have no doubt that many of you are exactly like me and like to know well in advance when your geeky movies are due for release (just in case you accidentally plan something minor - a holiday, major surgery, a life - across an important opening weekend) I thought I’d share with you my list of genre movie release dates for the next 12-18 months.

No doubt, like me, you’ll all find this exceptionally useful and will be scribbling dates down in your diary even as you read this (humour me here guys).

Anyway look on, ye mighty, and despair - especially any Americans out there, who’ll be wondering what the hell is going on with all these crazy dates (on which point, note that these are provision dates and open to sudden and dramatic shifts - all I’m saying is don’t plan your wedding after seeing these if you really can’t stand the thought of not being first in the queue for Resident Evil: Extinction).
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Posted August 8, 2007 Comments(1)

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.

Posted August 7, 2007 Comments(1)

MURKY DEPTHS

The first issue of Murky Depths came through my door today. I have to congratulate the publishers on their courage. This is a bold production. Glossy paper, American comic-sized, fiction from Jon Courtenay Grimwood and Richard Calder (although one is a reprint but not one I’d read before and the other a comic version of a story from Interzone that I really didn’t like) and a host of other less famous but familiar names from the short fiction scene. At £6.99 an issue, it feels expensive for a relatively slim volumebut there’s a really interesting mix of comic and prose here and it’s a lovely object to hold and I’ve always been a believer in rewarding those with courage, so I’ll be subscribing. I might even pester them with story submissions if I’ve got anything suitably dark but I really don’t understand the payment section of the guidelines:

“Currently set at £10 for maximum 5,000 words, prorated from 500 words up.”
Can anyone explain that?

POWER IN A UNION?
Committed trade unionist though I am (I work for one and I’m a member of three others) even I can’t work out what’s going with this story from Wired about bloggers seeking to set up their own trade union. To negotiate with who? On what collective basis? Huh?

If you’re earning a living writing online (or hoping to) and want a trade union, then you should join a union for journalists or writers (in the UK, hint, it’s the NUJ or The Writers’ Guild) who have plenty of experience dealing with the freelance and the underemployed writer and of helping you enforce contracts etc. The last thing the world needs is another half-arsed, badly defined union.

SECOND LIFE, PRIME TARGET
There’s definitely something of a backlash going on against Second Life at the moment. Stories like this one about it’s environmental impact, this one about it being a breeding ground for “virtual jihadists” (virtual jihadists seem like a much safer idea than actual jihadists, don’t they?), or a particularly harsh assessment of the business prospects for companies using the virtual world in this month’s Wired (story not yet online) seem to be cropping up every day. What once was a darling of the Web 2.0 seems to be taking some serious hits.

I’ve never been tempted by Second Life or any of the MMPORGs - I have enough trouble managing to run one not very organised life, I don’t know how I’d cope with two (it’s much the same reason why I’ve never been tempted to stray in my marriage, it’s just seems too much hard work for too little reward! Oh, and I love my wife - in case she reads this - and I look like Jabba the Hutt’s fatter brother).

So, anyway, it was nice to find out that at least someone still seems to be taking the virtual realm seriously. I really do think there’s a story to be written about Jesuits in cyberspace.

AND FINALLY…

Since I mentioned my wife, it was our 11th wedding anniversary this weekend and because we weren’t able to do anything special last year, we had a blow out. We handed our daughter to the granparents for a weekend of mutual appreciation, and then went and saw Spamalot (very obvious, very funny), had a superb meal at Richard Corrigan’s restaurant Lindsay House (if you’re going to blow a few hundred quid on a nice meal, this is a good option - I’m still having dessert flashbacks), and then the next day went to see Othello at The Globe - which is an excellent staging (all the women are especially good). It was my first time at The Globe, and it’s a fantastic experience. The sun was shining, the crowd was appreciative (even though the groundlings had to stand for the best part of three hours) and the way the performance used its little band of musicians exploited the venue brilliantly. I’ll definitely go back. In fact, I’d love to see The Merchant of Venice there in September. We also stayed in very, very nice London hotel.

What this all brought home to me, however, was how luxury is utterly wasted on the rich. At every turn this weekend we seemed to be being followed by people who looked and sounded much wealthier than us moaning about the slightest (and when I say slight, I mean requiring the presence of an electron microscope to find) inconvenience and turning their noses up at the extraordinary. It was reassuring to discover that the urge to perpetrate bloody revolution continues to burn not too far below the surface when confronted with such people. To the barricades comrades! Everyone deserves fine food, fancy wines, great entertainment and hotel showers that are like being refreshed by a sparkling mountain stream. Oh yes.

Posted August 6, 2007 Comments(8)

Another drabble this time.

Unusually gothic for me.

Nothing more to add, except that I hope who ever is out there (if anyone is) enjoys it.

.

She kissed me

She kissed me once and I was lost.

“Come,” she said.

Like a lamb, I went.

The hotel was dying. Drab wallpaper sagged on damp walls. Lights flickered oddly, as if underwater. The carpets danced with Rorschach splatters, black as dried blood. Those visions of writhing monsters and torn flesh were old friends.

“Please me,” she said.

I tried, weeping gratefully. She just laughed.

“Please me.” She gave me a blade, bone-handled and fine.

I opened myself from neck to belly and watched my blood, steaming, soak the floor.

“Please,” I said.

She kissed me again.

“Thank you,” I smiled.

Posted August 3, 2007 Comments(5)