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Warner Brothers and DC both realize that they are lagging behind Marvel, who seems to put out multiple projects each year, and recently held some meetings with the intention of assembling a strategy on releasing films based on their other popular characters like Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and the other members of the Justice League. WB President Alan Horn says they want to take their time and execute comic book properties, "into viable movie product in an intelligent way so that we introduce them like planes on a runway. They have to be setup the right way and lined up the right way and all take off one at a time and fly safe and fly straight."
What does that mean for the state of the long-gestating "Justice League Of America" film that was almost rush-released into production last year? Horn says, in not so many words, that this project is dead... for now.
"To put it simply: the studio doesn't want to piss off the Comic-Con contingent," Variety writes.
"These are big, iconic characters, so when you make them into a movie, you'd better be shooting for a pretty high standard," Horn said. "You're not always going to reach it, but you have to be shooting for it. We're going to make a Justice League movie, whether it's now or 10 years from now. But we're not going to do it and Warners is not going to do it until we know it's right."
WB production President Jeff Robinov is more to the point and basically says, "we can't fuck around here" and rush out crap that the fans will rip to shred. He also admits their writers and producers need to do more homework on the characters' lives and complex histories. "We're not off the notion of a Justice League," he told Variety. "There's a massive interest and knowledge in the comicbook industry and it takes time to sort of catch up and understand the characters and the history, where they've intersected with each other and what their worlds are. That's part of the education that we're going through."
Is it just us or does a post-Christopher Nolan superhero world seem way too mature for the concept of a DC Justice League? Doesn't it take away everything he built with the new "Batman" films, in which the Dark Knight is the lone wolf who fights crime but is destined to face life alone. Honestly Warners, you might just be better off scraping any Justice League plans and just keep releasing "Batman" films until people stop showing up, which at this rate would be somewhere around 2145.
More D.C./Warner announcements are expected shortly, but then again, these "announcements" have been expected for a while now. What's taking so long? Perhaps the two companies are on the same page yet? - Additional contributions by Mickey Pagels Read more...
Oooh, it's a nerd on nerd fight! In an interview with moviehole.net, "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr. blew every "Dark Knight" fanboy's bubble by stating that the Christopher Nolan film was way to high-brow for its own good (whoa, highbrow, did RDJ skip high school or something?)
Which side will geeks take in this fight? This is some serious division and polarization in the ranks. Will Harry Knowles call for a truce soon?
"My whole thing is that that I saw 'The Dark Knight'. I feel like I'm dumb because I feel like I don't get how many things that are so smart. It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'Thats not my idea of what I want to see in a movie." Downey Jr. preceded to get personal and take some deep jabs at DC for making him feel like an unintelligent movie-goer. "I loved 'The Prestige' but I didn't understand 'The Dark Knight'. Didn't get it, still can't tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I'm like, 'I get it. This is so high brow and so fucking smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie'. 'You know what? Fuck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that is where I am coming from."
Man, what a throwdown. Did RDJ not read even a handful of Batman comics growing up? This could be the catalyst for the bloodfest Marvel vs. DC war we have all been waiting for. Marvel, the comics of the people against the old guard blue-blooded DC. The nerds will eradicate each other! This bold statement begs the question that with a big name like Downey Jr. out of the closet, will more people in the movie industry come forward and admit they too were confused by some of 'The Dark Knights' like, really super deep philosophy. Uhhh... OK, how about them perplexing action sequences!
With the insanely popular Comic-Com wrapping up this week and Hollywood's apparent anti-originality stance now fully in place ("The Incredible Hulk", "The Spirit", the announced "Robocop" remake, "Terminator Salvation," both renditions of "Sherlock Holmes" and many, many more), we now can expect even more comic-book movies to be pumped out in the next few years.
But with all the obscure comic-book heroes that have been brough to the big-screen and are sure to be unveiled in the near future, how long must our capped crusaders be ashamed of who they really are?
If you haven't noticed most the comic-books tend to revolve around males who love to dress up in completely unnecessarily tight outfits and parade around town with their well-muscled bodies busting through. Frank Miller's beef-fest "300" brought this type of latent homo-eroticism from the back of our minds to a place where one could no longer ignore the obvious, comic-books are pretty damn homosexual. And come one, with the recent development of legal gay marriage in a few states it is clear that times are changing, so how long are we going to ignore the spandex elephant in the room? Honestly, comic-books are about grown men running around at night in tights attempting to fulfill the urges they cannot satisfy in their daily lives, which prohibits them from having meaningful relationships with the females in their lives. Hmm, sounds like the comic world needs to jump into the 21st century and embrace the sexuality of their heroes, they could do for the gay crime fighters what "Brokeback Mountain" did for gay sheep herders. But who could step up and be the poster boy for gay superheroes...well, Firebrand of course, who was on Radaronline.com's list of superheroes who will never make it to the big screen (just wait Radar).
Also known as Rod Reilly, this son of a wealthy industrialist was bored and decided to fight crime with his muscle laden servant (Its perfect for DC Comics, he is the gay version of Bruce Wayne). Although his sexuality was never overtly stated, it is alluded to by the fact that he fights crime in tight red pants complemented by a mesh t-shirt. The evidence was further stacked up when his sister wonders why a playboy bachelor like her brother needs a live-in studly bodyguard and upon entering his closet remarks "from the look of these clothes, I didn't know my brother quite as well as I thought I did!"
With "The Dark Knight" being the fastest film ever to reach $300 million and the recent popularity of gay-chic in many metropoltian areas, this franchise could be the gold mine that DC badly needs to keep up with Marvel. Sure the flyovers might reject it, but then again, they do seem fine with gay entertainment ("300" was huge with them). Take a step into the future comic fans and lets make a world in which superheroes are no longer afraid to step out of the closet.
The Internet pissed its pants yesterday afternoon. Why? Well, because the fanboys got their first real taste of the heavily-anticipated adaptation of the heralded graphic novel "Watchmen," that's being directed by full-grown fanboy and film director Zack Snyder (the filmmaker behind "300").
We're fans of the graphic novel created by cult comic-book icon Alan Moore, butwe read it a few years after the fact and which might be part of the reasonwhy we never considered it as seminal as Frank Miller's "Dark Knight," but it is quite good. Regardless, the trailer, more images hit and interviews started appearing everywhere. While the promotional onslaught attack? Cause Comic-Con the nerd mecca of all things super-hero, sci-fi, fantasy, etc. is next weekend in San Diego (a whale's vagina!).
In the Entertainment Weekly cover story that comes out Friday, Snyder threw down the gauntlet. ''In my movie, Superman doesn't care about humanity, Batman can't get it up, and the bad guy wants world peace.''Will Watchmen be the end of superhero movies? Probably not. But it sure will kick them in the gut.''
And then he pretty much pissed all over the gauntlet and said, "how you like me now? Hot enough for ya?"
"And some of this [super-hero] stuff is hard to take seriously. I mean, The Hulk? Come on.'' Snyder remembers screening some Watchmen footage for an unnamed studio executive. Afterward, Snyder says, the exec turned to him and said, ''This makes Superman look stupid.''
MTV spoke to Snyder and it's interesting to note, they visited the set and basically said without the special effects, people looked kind of retarded ("Billy Crudup was wearing a bizarre getup that made him look like a Smurf hooked up to electrodes"). They said the actors put a lot of faith into the director and the special effects. Snyder says what you've seen is just the beginning. "That [CGI] stuff is, honestly, in the early days still, so it gets better and better every day."
Asked whether the movie would represent the more "quiet and meditative" parts of the Watchmen story, Snyder danced around the answer basically saying no in not so many words. "The truth is, the movie is designed to get pop culture excited. And to me, in the end, it is a very intellectual and moral debate that these characters will have. But that doesn't mean they don't kick each other's asses on the way!"
"Watchmen" is a complex, multi-layered mystery adventure and surely it can't all fit in the film, but that doesn't mean they didn't try. Patrick Wilson who plays Nite Owl in the film recently told the MTV Movies blog that Snyder attempted to shoot the entire graphic novel, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll make the final cut.
"Zack tried to put everything he could in and he left it to the studio to cut it and tell him what he can’t fit in. For the script we started with, every scene has something different than what’s on the page. That’s the fun of it, building it as you go.”
Every couple of months, some magazine dusts off the endlessly quotable Alan Moore, as cantankerous a man as their is (and a practicing magician), and ask him a bunch of easy fishing-with-dynamite questions about "Watchmen" to which he barks out contemptuous answers about his utter disdain for the movie adaptation. EW trolled him out once more just this week (how coincidental!). Moore lives at a moral code not far from Rorscharch and pretty much above every living human being on earth. He detests D.C. Comics, the people that own "Watchmen," and Warner Bros. - the studio producing the film with D.C. - are under strict orders not to contact him. "I don't want anyone who works for DC comic books to contact me ever again, or I'll change my number," he said flatly. Moore has absolutely zero interest in Hollywood and the dude is such a staunch nutjob man of his word you could pretty much bet the farm that that will never ever change.
[Note: for those that have still never seen the HBO drama "The Wire," Jesus, even Alan Moore loves it: "It's the most stunning piece of television that has ever come out of America, possibly the most stunning piece of television full-stop." This is the type of quote you hang above your desk if you're David Simon.]
ComicCon is right around the corner, but Moore wouldn't rightly touch that nerd ground zero with a thousand foot pole. "I find it a bit overwhelming and creepy." Rope of Silicon has done an amazing side by side comparison with the trailer and the comics that illustrates Snyder's almost pathological attention to detail. This sort of shit goes a long way with fans and it's admittedly quite impressive.
We kind of dissed the trailer yesterday, but we will admit the special effects do look fantastic in the HD version. We were getting more and more impressed with this project as the casting was announced and the realistic pictures were released, but this so-so trailer has put us back on the fence.
Warner Bros. has generally been working D.C.'s properties, Batman and Superman and... well, that's about it. Film projects based on their other heroes like Wonder Woman and most notably and recently, The Justice League Of America have floundered in going-nowheresville.
WB and DC have just met and the meeting prolly went a little like this:
DC execs: Dudes, what the fuck!? Marvel is kicking our ass, what gives!? WB suits: Guys, c'mon Batman has done really well, Superman was loved by many old people. These spreadsheet show that in Korea, audiences can't wait for aMartian Manhunter film, this looks promising! DC mob: [burning stares across the marble corporate table] Clueless WB: According to our calculations and research, audiences are going to grow tired of Marvel properties in the year 2013! [nervous smiles] Warner declined to comment on what was actually said at the meetings, but that pretty much nails it we bet. Either way, whatever comes from their corporate pow wow and group think, a large announcement will be made to please the shareholders soon enough. Much likeMarvel's overambitious announcement earlier this year, where they announced flicks based on the Avengers, Thor and Captain America, D.C. will likely announce a slew of projects based on Wonder Woman, The Flash, The Green Lantern and other similarly lesser characters not worthy of an entire feature film expected to be delivered in a comparably unreasonable and rushed time frame.
WB says: "While we are not going to go into the specifics of the meetings, we're constantly looking at how best to exploit the DC Comics characters and properties. DC is an incredibly valuable asset to Warner Bros. and plays an important role across the entire studio by providing development and franchise opportunities for all media, including films, television, home entertainment, animation, consumer products, video games and digital platforms."
What is it with pinhead geek websites? You guys should own the whole super-hero realm thingy. You cover each and every day veryreverently.
Anyhow, USA Today runs a non-story today where "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau said that the heroes Marvel is looking at to star in the "Avengers" movie are Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Ant-Man and Iron Man. Ok, and? This is news? Well, apparently to half the movie geek websites out there it is despite the fact that Marvel announced all the properties they own months ago (just one example) and they were all the names above and all one-time Avengers members.
Plus, we swear we've read Marvel head David Maisel say this a million times and we don't really pay that much attention [ed. apparently you pay more attention than others]. Kind of annoying...
Also, DC Comics is in trouble, right? And evidently, DC Comics Executive Editor Dan DiDiois on the way outs. Why? Well, outside of the failing comic books themselves, because D.C. has failed to get any of their comic book film properties going outside of the Batman series. Nikki Finke writes what sounds like one big rehash of what our comic book expert friend already wrote in a lengthy post about why DC is fucked thanks to Marvel's film success. A very prescient post, if we do say so ourselves. Read more...
In that first clip and many follow-ups, YouTube video satirist Itssomerandomguy articulates the sense that one of the two major comic book publishers, which is now known as Marvel Entertainment, has been much more successful in establishing a vigorous set of film franchises than its rival, DC Comics. By choosing Apple’s “I’m a Mac/I’m a PC” ad campaign as its template, this interweb clipmaker series evokes the four decades-old perception that Marvel’s superhero characters —and the interconnected universe they inhabit— is much much cooler that of the hidebound, stodgy DC.
I’ve never been partisan along those lines, as many fans of superhero fiction have been: exclusive devotees of the former line have been referred to for years as “Marvel zombies.” But, particularly after this past weekend ("Iron Man's massive box-office success and announcement of a slew of new Marvel franchises), this dude's essential point is inarguable.
In 1969, DC Comics was acquired by the entertainment conglomerate that was known during the ‘70s as “Warner Communications” and as Time Warner Inc. by 1990. As a component of what has for 30 years been the most massive media and entertainment corporation the world has never known, DC has supervised licensed characters like Superman and Batman to the likes of underwear manufacturers, broadway shows and god knows how many other products.
So it would stand to reason that, synergistic strategies being what they are, DC would funnel these characters towards its more high-profile corporate cousin, Warner Bros. Pictures, so that big budget movies could be produced and enormous profits would be made. By the late ‘70s, film making was finally ready to do justice to the exploits of larger-than-life do gooders; longtime fans would burst into tears as their favorite burst onto the silvers screen, while the majority of filmgoers would sit back and enjoy the ride.
Beginning in 1978, with Richard Donner’s two Superman films (let’s not mention 1983’s Superman III and 1987’s Superman IV: Quest for Peace) and continuing through Tim Burton’s two Batman films (same drill for Joel Schumaker’s contributions to the franchise in the 1990s), that’s how it worked. Those two characters are as durable and as world-renowned as Mickey Mouse. In particular, Batman’s reputation was rehabilitated after Burton’s 1989 film: most folks born before 1980 knew only the deadpan goofball of the 1960s tv program, but them born afterwards know Batman as a tortured avenger of the night.
Marvel Comics, by contrast, had no comparable presence in Hollywood until 2000. While the company changed the comic book game in the 1960s with the Fantastic Four and Spider-man books and thus has been the market leader since the late ‘60s, it was passed like a bauble from one corporation that didn’t quite know what to do with it to another, culminating with ownership by junk bond magnate Ronald Perelman in 1991 and its subsequent bankruptcy in 1996.
But 2000’s "X-Men" reversed Marvel’s fortunes overall. Produced by Fox, the film was followed in 2003 by "X2" and in 2006 by "X-Men: Last Stand": all three cleaned up at the box office. Then came Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man franchise in 2002, followed by Ang Lee’s problematic "Hulk" and Tim Story’s officially released Fantastic Four films in 2005 and 2007. Subsequent films like 2003’s "Daredevil", 2004’s "Punisher" retread, 2005’s "Elektra," and 2007’s "Ghost Rider," may not have each immediately justified their expense, but allcontributed to the perception that Marvel’s characters could be mined for boffo box office.
Each of those films, however, were produced by major studios. But "Iron Man, "which boasts the tenth best opening weekend gross of all time, is the first film in which Marvel is now going it alone (although Paramount distributed it). Now Marvel Studios is a proven Hollywood player and is proceeding with preproduction on films based on Captain America, the Mighty Thor, the Avengers and Ant-Man. Only the evidently troubled Incredible Hulk, due next month, may dim Marvel Studios’ prospects.
Meanwhile, DC and Warner Bros, successfully restarted the Batman franchise in 2005 via Christopher Nolan’s "Batman Begins" and, more than likely, this summer’s "Dark Knight". But "Superman Returns," X-Men director Bryan Singer’s 2006 love letter to Donner’s films, did not perform up to expectations. A Wonder Woman film, briefly helmed by Buffy-maven Joss Whedon, has been in development hell for more than a decade; a Justice League of America film, which would likely end up a super hero clusterfuck of the most confusing order, was quashed earlier this year after consuming the attention of seemingly every comic message board goon extant (it should be noted that DC’s properties have been successful on television, via "Smallville" and various animated programs).
Methinks DC and Warner Brothers may be in deep crisis mode, watching as their once-utterly dysfunctional competitor cleans up at the box office while their own non-Batman, non-Superman properties languish. It would seem that it’s time for Time Warner to see to it that its two subsidiaries, which have had three decades to properly synergize, get in gear and produce films that will, since the health of super-hero films seems likely to remain robust for some time, make lots and lots of money.
But here’s the thing: the physical product that since 1938 has been the core venue for super heroes has been in decline for years. The peak years for funny books were during World War II, before television, gaming, and every type of mass entertainment that emerged in between. While super-hero comic books were more or less directed at young boys for the first 25 years of their existence, it could be argued that DC and Marvel have been catering to aging and otherwise obsessive readers—them what have the inclination to absorb decades of lore regarding what device Dr. Doom used to incapacitate theThing in issue #126— for the last 30 years.
For the past three years, DC and Marvel comic books have been enmeshed in companywide crossovers, i.e. “tentpole” events, in which nearly every book is involved in a enormous storyline where “nothing will ever be the same,” “heroes will live, heroes will die” and “the universe is in jeopardy.” A prospective reader would be daunted to understand what, in fact, the fuck is going on, and would perhaps choose to spend his or her shekels on a pursuit that would not require purchasing every single comic book put out by either company in order to follow the story. Every time a big super hero movie is released, representatives of DC and Marvel claim that said big super hero movie will drive up sales for their books. But this never comes to pass.
A few weeks ago, I attended the New York ComicCon at the Jacob Javits Center. I was expecting to encounter sweatier, more obese and less well groomed versions of myself almost exclusively. I did see a lot of guys like that, but I also saw teenage girls dressed up as relatively obscure super hero characters, and young kids were all over the damn place.
My inference is that tons of people like super-heroes, but maybe not every super-hero fan wants to bother with comic books. Perhaps, as more and more films devoted to Marvel (and DC) characters are greenlighted, we will see Marvel and DC abandoning the waning comic book business in order to adjust the meaning of what the super hero business is.
Oh yeah, another thing! If anyone reading these words has an evolved interest in DC and Marvel characters and history —which is to say, NUUUUUURRRRRDDS— perhaps you’d like to visit my highly geeky blog. It will be highly confusing to anyone who does not meet the above description; someone who does meet that description, however, could be the second person to comment therein!
Yet another thing: here's a good example of how television writers of the 1970s thought comic book material should be treated: the following is an excerpt from a superhero roast, hosted by Ed McMahon. Abandon hope, all ye who choose to watch other segments from 1978's Legends of the Super Heroes!
Ideally, The Playlist will be a locale to discuss film scores and soundtracks, movie music, dvd releases, regular film news, reviews and all that jazz, but you'll have to forgive and tolerate a digression or two at our whims and discretions. Secondarily, The Playlist is the official home to The Playlist Soundtrack Series.
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Fresh off the mega success with "The Dark Knight," D.C. Comics is obviously looking to expand its film repertoire with more movies based on their characters. Variety has weighed in with a rather meaty piece on the D.C./Warners comic book properties struggle.
WB production President Jeff Robinov is more to the point and basically says, "we can't fuck around here" and rush out crap that the fans will rip to shred. He also admits their writers and producers need to do more homework on the characters' lives and complex histories. "We're not off the notion of a Justice League," he told Variety. "There's a massive interest and knowledge in the comicbook industry and it takes time to sort of catch up and understand the characters and the history, where they've intersected with each other and what their worlds are. That's part of the education that we're going through."
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