Holy Casting Couch,
Batman, They Can't Do That!
Or: Future Funnybook Follies
Steven E. McDonald
Superman may not be able to find a telephone booth, the Batmobile has a couple of flat tires, and the Men In Black face astronomical budget woes, but there is absolutely no shortage of comics-based projects in the works. This is, unfortunately, more of a threat than a promise - while X-Men (due in July 2000 from Fox) has Bryan Singer (Apt Pupil) treating it with a certain degree of respect, the same cannot be expected for many other projects.
As a first example, we have the beleaguered Sandman (Warner Bros.) Neil Gaiman, the creator of the spooky Vertigo comic, has expressed his disgust with the stalled production on numerous occasions ("It's stuck in development hell," he was reported as saying at one convention, "long may it burn.") Producer Jon Peters, former hairdresser and half of the Guber-Peters team that managed to cause a war of litigation between Warner Bros and Sony a decade ago, is intent on reducing the tale of the Lord of Dreams to a slam-bang action movie - this is akin to producing the Mahabarata as a Western. At this point screenwriters are being hired in six-packs to reduce waiting time between drafts.
Then there is Archie (Universal.) Forget To Riverdale And Back - Tommy O'Haver (Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss) is set to direct from his own script. Casting rumors have been causing interesting internal reactions over the months - amongst those mentioned have been Conan O'Brien, Giovanni Ribisi, Jenny McCarthy, Charisma Carpenter, Melissa Joan Hart, Jim Carrey, and Glenn Close. Keep in mind that the budget for the film is supposedly $15 million and that O'Haver apparently plans complex musical numbers and dream sequences. Latest news has this one mired in the development muck.
Jonah Hex is being threatened in one form or another from Warner Bros. A weird Western could be fun, but Akiva Goldsman (Batman & Robin, Lost In Space) is in charge. Stuck in the mire on the Batman franchise, Warner Bros. has been working on Bruce Wayne, a TV series set before Wayne became the Batman - say what? Warner Bros may also get around to Camelot 3000, based on the 12 issue DC series about the reincarnation of King Arthur and company - the possibilities for camp there are just too horrifying to contemplate. Rumors also suggest an adaptation of Kingdom Come, an alternate future version of the DC universe, written by Mark Waid and painted by Alex Ross, that sees the return of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in an attempt to put a stop to the rampages of a younger generation of super-powered beings, only to precipitate a Gotterdamerung-style catastrophe. Budget alone would make the rumored TV miniseries unlikely, and any attempt to scale the project down would gut the story.
Other bad ideas at various stages include Silver Surfer and Ghost Rider, based on the Marvel characters, a new version of Barbarella with Drew Barrymore attached, Evil Ernie from the Chaos Comics line (just a plain bad idea if you ask me), an updated version of Modesty Blaise from a script by Quentin "Do I sound hip?" Tarantino, an adaptation of Broomhilda, a feature film version of Wonder Woman starring Sandra Bullock, a live-action Josie And The Pussycats feature that sounds like the Spice Girls on acid, and, last, but not least, the dire possibility of a feature version of Alan Moore's The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen that seems likely to take a complex graphic story and dumb it down to idiocy, though the hiring of James Robinson (Starman) as screenwriter provides some glimmer of hope.
©2000 by Steven E. McDonald
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