Who Are These Masked Men? Two billion dollars. Gone.
It's not the nefarious work of Dr. Doom, the Green Goblin or Magneto. No, that's the box-office haul from the recent spate of superhero movies starring Spider-Man, the X-Men and even the less than smashing Hulk.
So, it's no wonder the studios are in search of more heroes to save them from, well, not being not as filthy, stinkin' rich as they'd like to be. But excluding the upcoming Fantastic Four, Batman and Superman movies, who exactly does that leave? Are there any heroes left?
Dude, Marvel and DC aren't even getting started. Sure, the big-name superheroes are pretty well exhausted, but the comic-book companies are teeming with folks in tights ready to take on the bad guys.
The only problem? You've probably never heard of them. So, Megaplex dug into the stacks and found three promising second-tier titles on their way to the big time, charging hard for release in 2006...
Iron Man: Introduced 41 years ago in Tales of Suspense #39, this guy has been batted around Hollywood for a while, drawing the competing interest of Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. Why? We have no idea.
Sure, Iron Man's secret identity, Tony Stark, is a suave, handsome, brilliant, wealthy, presumably virile industrialist who drinks too much. But he's also just a man and nothing special when not clad in the iron suit invented in the North Vietnamese jungles to keep his heart beating after being punctured by shrapnel.
To figure out how to turn the Bill Gates-in-a-metal-suit story into megabucks, New Line paid geek scribes Mark Protosevich, David Hayter and Blade: Trinity director David Goyer to hang out for a couple of days last year to, as Goyer put it, "spitball and debate."
Ultimately, Hayter rewrote a draft penned by Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. So now, Nick Cassavetes is directing and, reportedly, Leonardo DiCaprio is interested. (The script is one of several in a stack at his bedside, according to a recent Vanity Fair article.)
But what would that guy know about playing a billionaire wrapped in metal and hurtling through the air. Hey, wait a minute...
Sub-Mariner: That's the supermoniker given to Prince Namor of Atlantis: half-man, half-amphibian and all-nekkid dude (save for a skimpy green Speedo with gold trim).
The oldest character in the Marvel canon (debuting in 1939), the Sub-Mariner, with his pointy ears and Caesar hairdo, is the surly Spock of the sea. His one true allegiance is the ocean--a trait that, in the hands of director Chris Columbus (he of Home Alone and Harry Potter) and writer-exec producer David Self, might have him headed for eco-warrior status. Details uncovered by Megaplex are sketchy, and no big names have come along to fit into the magic Speedo...
Watchmen: It's the Unforgiven of comic books--a brutal genre deconstruction, written by living legend and madman Alan Moore, that ponders the real-life implications of superheroes walking among us. We're a little wary of Moore's dense, minutiae-riddled 12-issue series getting pared down to two hours, but we can't stop it. After a dalliance with geek fave Darren Aronofsky, Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass (that's him with all the hair and the specs) is now in charge, and the flick has been, as they say, fast-tracked. Which means the hunt for Rorshach, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias is on.
Whoever the hell those guys are.
Source: http://www.eonline.com/Reviews/Movies/Megaplex/Column/050112b.html
It's not the nefarious work of Dr. Doom, the Green Goblin or Magneto. No, that's the box-office haul from the recent spate of superhero movies starring Spider-Man, the X-Men and even the less than smashing Hulk.
So, it's no wonder the studios are in search of more heroes to save them from, well, not being not as filthy, stinkin' rich as they'd like to be. But excluding the upcoming Fantastic Four, Batman and Superman movies, who exactly does that leave? Are there any heroes left?
Dude, Marvel and DC aren't even getting started. Sure, the big-name superheroes are pretty well exhausted, but the comic-book companies are teeming with folks in tights ready to take on the bad guys.
The only problem? You've probably never heard of them. So, Megaplex dug into the stacks and found three promising second-tier titles on their way to the big time, charging hard for release in 2006...
Iron Man: Introduced 41 years ago in Tales of Suspense #39, this guy has been batted around Hollywood for a while, drawing the competing interest of Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage. Why? We have no idea.
Sure, Iron Man's secret identity, Tony Stark, is a suave, handsome, brilliant, wealthy, presumably virile industrialist who drinks too much. But he's also just a man and nothing special when not clad in the iron suit invented in the North Vietnamese jungles to keep his heart beating after being punctured by shrapnel.
To figure out how to turn the Bill Gates-in-a-metal-suit story into megabucks, New Line paid geek scribes Mark Protosevich, David Hayter and Blade: Trinity director David Goyer to hang out for a couple of days last year to, as Goyer put it, "spitball and debate."
Ultimately, Hayter rewrote a draft penned by Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. So now, Nick Cassavetes is directing and, reportedly, Leonardo DiCaprio is interested. (The script is one of several in a stack at his bedside, according to a recent Vanity Fair article.)
But what would that guy know about playing a billionaire wrapped in metal and hurtling through the air. Hey, wait a minute...
Sub-Mariner: That's the supermoniker given to Prince Namor of Atlantis: half-man, half-amphibian and all-nekkid dude (save for a skimpy green Speedo with gold trim).
The oldest character in the Marvel canon (debuting in 1939), the Sub-Mariner, with his pointy ears and Caesar hairdo, is the surly Spock of the sea. His one true allegiance is the ocean--a trait that, in the hands of director Chris Columbus (he of Home Alone and Harry Potter) and writer-exec producer David Self, might have him headed for eco-warrior status. Details uncovered by Megaplex are sketchy, and no big names have come along to fit into the magic Speedo...
Watchmen: It's the Unforgiven of comic books--a brutal genre deconstruction, written by living legend and madman Alan Moore, that ponders the real-life implications of superheroes walking among us. We're a little wary of Moore's dense, minutiae-riddled 12-issue series getting pared down to two hours, but we can't stop it. After a dalliance with geek fave Darren Aronofsky, Bourne Supremacy director Paul Greengrass (that's him with all the hair and the specs) is now in charge, and the flick has been, as they say, fast-tracked. Which means the hunt for Rorshach, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias is on.
Whoever the hell those guys are.
Source: http://www.eonline.com/Reviews/Movies/Megaplex/Column/050112b.html