The Screengrab : dc comics

Are We Ready for We3?

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:15:00 GMT

We do our best to keep you updated about comics-to-film adaptations here at the Screengrab, but it's rare that we get to bring you news of a good comic being adapted for motion pictures. (And when we do, we're usually pretty nervous about it; see the last half-million posts we've made about Watchmen.) We were a bit surprised when it was announced recently that Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's critically acclaimed DC/Vertigo miniseries We3 was set for a big-screen pickup -- but not as suprised as we were when further details started coming in.

We3 is a strange property from the start. On the surface, it's a funny-animal tale, but it very quickly takes exceedingly dark turns that belie its Incredible Journey trappings. It's a brilliant, highly moving story, and its ethical stance is one of unabashed animal rights advocacy. And it's a visually dynamic book, with remarkably intricate art from Scottish artist Quitely that complements and enhances the writing by Morrison, probably the most highly praised author in comics since Alan Moore. Its visual style -- described by its creators as "Western manga" -- would seem to make it a perfect fit for animation, so it was shocking when Warner Brothers announced it would be a live-action production. To add bafflement to perplexity, the website Mania is now reporting, based on an interview with producer Don Murphy, that it will be directed by John Stevenson, best known for Kung Fu Panda.

There's a lot to make fans nervous about a big-screen version of We3; will gunshy producers dilute the animal rights message? Will the money-hungry studio dumb it down to appeal to family-film audiences? Will the story's violence get toned down? But with this latest announcement, subtle questions like that get swept away in the speculation that Murphy and Warner don't even understand the basic format: why make a live-action movie of a story so perfectly suited to animation -- and, if you're determined to make a live-action film, why hire a director best known for his work in animation? We'll keep you posted.

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Watchmen 2?

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:45:00 GMT

There's not much you can rely on in comics anymore these days. Lois Lane and Clark Kent finally got married, Spider-Man unmasked in front of the world, Lex Luthor became President of the United States, and the Rawhide Kid turned gay. But there's still two things you can count on: the dead don't stay dead, and any comic that turns a profit is going to get a sequel.

One of the few exceptions to the latter rule has been DC's legendary mini-series, Watchmen. Generally considered the most highly acclaimed superhero comic of all time, its critical reputation helped fight off the demand for a follow-up engendered by its relatively high sales figures. (One might also argue that author Alan Moore's wishes, combined with a fiendishly ambiguous ending that seemed to disallow the very notion of a sequel, might have something to do with it. But Moore doesn't own the property; DC does, and since his rancorous departure from the company, they've never been particularly interested in his opinion on the matter, as evidenced by the large number of movies and TV shows based on his stories, but without his name in the credits.) But with interest in the upcoming movie version of the comic driving sales to a record high, and the motion picture industry in the habit of booking sequels years in advance to films they merely suspect are going to be hits, Comicscape takes up the question: are we inevitably going to see a Watchmen sequel, either on screen or on the page?

The very idea is anathema to many fans of the comic, who agree with critics that Moore's perfectly planned, circular storytelling was deliberately constructed so as to ensure that only the reader could decide what happens next. But if the movie makes enough money, a sequel could be unavoidable; Hollywood is a town that would let Jesus jump down off the cross and take his revenge on Pilate if it tested well with audiences. Comicscape points out that the idea of a sequel is nothing new: many such proposals have been floated over the years, including Rorschach's Journal and The Comedian's Vietnam War Diary (neither of which ever materialized). Plans are also in the works for a Watchmen video game set in the early 1970s, following the prevailing 'wisdom' that a prequel is the only non-disastrous way to expand the story. In the end, though, author Chad Derdowski echoes our own sentiments on the matter: any Watchmen sequel -- especially one without the participation of Alan Moore, which is virtually a guarantee -- will likely end up in the bargain bin next to old copies of Secret Wars II. "Classics are classics and will remain so,", he says, "no matter how hard a crappy sequel tries to ruin its legacy."

Watchmen: More Than Just Buying Dave Gibbons a New Boat

The Hollywood Pull List

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:45:00 GMT

There's nothing like getting what you want to make you wish you'd never wanted it in the first place. Many years ago, comic book geeks like myself used to wish for one...just one...decent big-screen adaptation of the adventures of our favorite superheroes; now, capes and cowls are so prevalent on the big screen that we're getting good and sick of them. The give-and-take we used to long for between the comic book industry and the motion picture business has become alarmingly one-sided; the funnybook biz is in one of the most precarious financial states it's ever seen, even as superhero adaptations teeter on the brink of billion-dollar box office business.

Things aren't likely to change, either. Even dedicated comics-to-film watchers like us were a bit shocked when we stumbled across this post at Den of Geek: it lists no less than seventy-five film adaptations of comic books that are said to be coming down the pike. Even if their definition of "comic book movie" is a little elastic (Sherlock Holmes and Conan villain Thulsa Doom are both referred to as comics properties), that's a hell of a lot of four-color heroes headed to the big screen. Even if as little as a third of them actually end up getting made, this is what is technically referred to as a "glut".

Of the seventy-five listed, how many will actually be worth watching, assuming they're actually completed? That remains to be seen. A lot of these look pretty dismal (bad juju already surrounds the Green Arrow prison flick Super Max, the Flash movie is probably permanently stalled, and the success of the Luke Cage picture depends entirely on whether it's directed by the John Singleton who did Boyz n tha Hood or the John Singleton who did 2 Fast 2 Furious), but we'd be lying if we said that the prospect of a movie version of The Hands of Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu -- directed by Yuen Woo-Ping and produced by Ang Lee -- didn't get our nerd juices flowing.

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Comic Book Movies Go Parisian

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:45:00 GMT

Let it never be said that the European film industry is so arty that it doesn't know a cash cow when one comes rambling by. In fact, Europe's reputation as a bastion of filmic integrity rests largely on the fact that, as a rule, only the best of their films are exported to the U.S.; we rarely see their big dumb moneymakers, which, in the Old World as the New, tend to be noisy action pictures, dopey romances and lowest-common-denominator comedies. Regardless of the assumptions some people make about Euro-film, producers over there aren't banking on a new Pasolini to pay for their winter vacation.

Witness the birth of Europa-Glenat. A brand-new amalgam of Luc Besson's powerhouse film production company EuropaCorp and the French comic book giant Editions Glenat, the new company -- headquartered in Paris and headed by Besson's right-hand woman, Eleanore de Prunele -- was formed after both companies saw the gargantuan box office business done by superhero movies in America over the last half-decade. Their initial deal calls for a straight 50/50 split on television and film developments based on Editions Glenat properties and and exclusive first-rights deal similar to that of DC Comics and Warner Brothers. Live-action films of properties like Voyageur and Vinci are planned, but much of the production money may be sunk into animation, which traditionally has a larger adult audience in Europe than it does in the U.S.

We're looking forward to seeing some of the Europa-Glenat products (Vinci in particular has loads of potential), but we urge both parties to stay very far away from American comics companies' conception of European superheroes. Believe us, Mr. Bresson, no one is waiting eagerly for an El Aguila or Olympian movie.

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Fox Takes Marvel's Dare

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Adaptations of Marvel Comics have been doing great business at the box office for almost ten years now, from X-Men to Spider-Man to Iron Man. And, just like in the comics, when one creative team doesn't find an audience, the big bosses at Marvel Films have been more than willing to try again with new writers, directors, and stars; Fantastic Four wasn't a critical success, but it made enough money to spawn a sequel; Ang Lee's Hulk was an ambitious letdown, but Marvel handed the property over to Edward Norton for a second chance; and The Punisher is being given another go-round despite two dismal adaptations so far. The one Marvel superhero franchise that hasn't been talked up for a reboot so far has been Daredevil (and its even worse spin-off, Elektra). That's probably because the original -- helmed by a hapless Mark Steven Johnson and starring an out-of-it Ben Affleck -- was such a piece of junk that no one wanted a second try at it.

That may be about to change. 20th Century Fox's co-chair, Tim Rothman, insists that the studio will be pairing with Marvel Films to produce another installment of the adventures of everyone's favorite blind lawyer/costumed vigilante; he's just not saying when. Or who. Or where, how, or perhaps most importantly, why. In a cagey interview with IESB, Rothman says the deed will get done, but fails to name names, and cites a curious precedent: "I think that the thing The Hulk showed...is that it is possible, that if you really do it right the audience will give you a second chance." Exactly what was done right about Norton's Hulk reboot and exactly who gave it a second chance is unclear: the movie was tepidly reviewed, and made almost exactly as much money as Ang Lee's famouse 'failure'. But hey, the spirit is willing even if the facts are weak.

While Rothman goes on to namecheck Christopher Nolan and his approach to the Distinguished Competition's Batman franchise as a possible peek at what the tone of the next Daredevil film might be, it's clearly too early to start talking about personnel. Which, in a way, is too bad: if Daredevil's worth doing, it's worth doing right. As we reported in this space a while back, Frank Miller and Jason Statham have both expressed some interest in a Daredevil movie, and one of the hottest action stars of today combined with the man who wrote some of the best Daredevil stories in comic book history could make for an intriguing film. On the other hand, if all Fox intends to do is find the next Mark Steven Johnson -- well, wake us when X-Men 4 is ready.

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Hollywood Welcomes Virgin

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

The comics racket is a tough one -- or, as Variety puts it in a bizarre moment of Coen-channeling when discussing Virgin's entry into the field a few years back, it is "a rocky place where their seeds could find no purchase". (Comics2Film adds the unwelcome phrasing that the company was "inseminated with funds from Richard Branson's media empire". Those guys really need to get out more.) After several largely fruitless years of attempting to steal market share away from the bigwigs at Marvel and DC -- and signing a deal with ex-Marvel boss Stan Lee to develop a line of properties for them that went nowhere -- Virgin Comics has finally realized what everyone else in the business already knows: that the real money in comics doesn't come from the books themselves, but from farming out their characters as properties to be used in Hollywood blockbusters. In aid of this, they're shuttering their New York office and moving the whole operation to L.A.

Branson insists that the comics wing isn't shutting down, it's simply reorganizing as a development company; but that's just typical business boilderplate. What should truly concern us here are the various bits of trivia concealed deep within the article, where the author clearly hoped we would not notice them: the fact that Virgin's "Hollywood development deals" for their characters are almost all slotted for release on the Sci-Fi Channel as opposed to an actual movie theatre, and feature such blockbuster properties as "Guy Ritchie's The Gamekeeper" and "Ed Burns' Dock Walloper"; the fact that, despite deals being inked all over town, not a single Virgin Comics film or TV production has actually been made; and the boffo news that Branson's partner in the venture is Deepak Chopra's son Gotham -- as in Gotham City, home of the Batman -- which likely explains the commonly cited reason for the comics line's failure, that it focuses on stories involving relatively obscure Indian mythology.

Still, the company has some real talent signed, from well-liked comics writer Mike Carey to porn star Jenna Jameson to Stan the Man himself. Time will tell if Virgin Comics can develop any of those signings into decent movies and/or TV shows, but this morning, Branson has to be wishing the entire venture didn't sound so much like a bad nepotistic joke in an inside-Hollywood parody.

Tony Stark (i.e., Robert Downey, Jr.) to Bruce Wayne: "I Got Your Dark Knight Right Here, Pal!"

Phil Nugent — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Robert Downey, Jr., America's scamp, has tasted what the other guys are selling and found it lacking. Downey, whose star vehicle Iron Man got the summer movie season of 2008 off to a bang back when it opened several hundred years ago, has given an interview to moviehole.com in which he found it impossible to discourse on what made his movie so special, and what will make its sequel (which reunites him with director Jon Favreau and Tropic Thunder co-writer Justin Theroux, who's working on the script) so special, without talking about what makes it different from The Dark Knight. Whereas Iron Man is "a very simple movie", Downey says of the Batman blockbuster, "It's like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I'm like, 'That's not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.' I loved [Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan's] The Prestige but 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 f--king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.' You know what? F-ck DC comics. That's all I have to say and that's where I'm really coming from."

The first thing to be said about this is that if anyone finds that their college education helps them to better understand why Jim Gordon didn't dispatch a SWAT team to surround that boat that the Joker was aboard after Eric Roberts tipped him off, then that lucky viewer must have gone to a hell of a school. (Personally, my college education wasn't even enough to keep me from pissing away eleven dollars on a ticket to Vicky Cristina Barcelona.) Of course, Downey's harsh words for DC Comics will set off little tremors in the minds of comics geeks who remember bitter wars of words on the playground between self-styled DC fanboys and Marvel zombies. However much he means it, it's fun when these companies' star employees pretend to be infected with the virus, as anyone who ever saw Alan Moore take custody of the microphone at a comics convention in the 1980s, before he adopted a "plague on both their houses" attitude. It's kind of like professional wrestling without the folding chairs. Downey himself seems to get a giggle out of his bad-boy act. "You know, you're never too old to burn your bridges because I believe I have offended everyone," he said. "I think I've got a couple more.

On the subject of his other summer hit, Tropic Thunder, Downey has one thing he wants to make very clear: he is not Kirk Lazarus, the looney, Oscar-festooned Method actor he plays, who vows to remain in character until he's recorded the picture's DVD commentary. Speaking of the character, Downey says that "I think his fatal flaw is pretty much any and everyone's who's in entertainment, which is, on a certain level: 'Oh if they believe they're a fraud and that's creating this neurotic state,' when the truth is, you are a fraud because you've gone too far into buying into your own hype and now you're, literally crazy. I think Kirk Lazarus is nuts." Discussing his decision to make Kirk Australian, Downey adds, "I just think that the Australian phenomenon reminds me more of American as with the British invasion from the '60s. But when I was thinking about Kirk Lazarus I was thinking about Colin Farrell, about Daniel Day Lewis and about Russell Crowe and whoever was the most effective tool for whatever my thing was, I would use." When it was pointed out to him that a lot of viewers sure do see a lot of Crowe in there, Downey permitted himself a smile. "Now do you think he would see it as the highest form of flattery or do you think that he would be less than pleased?"

Warner Brother Tries To Give The Distinguished Competition A Boost

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Despite the fact that The Dark Knight has made roughly eighty-five kerjillion dollars on its way to breaking nearly every box office record since the dawn of motion photography, DC Comics -- and, by extention, their parent company Warner Brothers -- is widely perceived as the big loser in the battle of superhero movies. Much as Marvel Comics did in the early '60s, Marvel Films -- the people responsible for Iron Man, Spider-Man and the X-Men franchise -- has largely trounced what it used to call its "Distinguished Competition". Although both companies have turned their franchise characters into successful movies, Marvel's have generally been seen as more successful, more entertaining, more true to their comic book origins, and most of all, easier to get made. While DC continues to farm its characters out to various studios, Marvel has consolidated its filmmaking power into its studio arm, ensuring a production continuity that provides another curious parallel to the '60s, when the more coherent continuity of Marvel's comics appealed to readers.

This is a situation that Warner Brothers, who's been making movies even longer than DC has been making comics, is eager to change. In an article in the latest Variety, Warner execs and DC bigwigs alike discuss what's being done to avoid the sort of missteps that have led to their being thought of as the second-tier player in superhero films. From greenlighting unprofitable tripe like Catwoman to dragging its feet on potential blockbusters like Wonder Woman and Justice League, DC's film development players have made a number of high-profile mistakes (let's not even speak of the botch-job that was the making and marketing of Superman Returns) that have led them to be seen as failures despite having put out the biggest blockbuster in four decades.

DC development executives Jeff Robinov (production vice-president) and Gregory Noveck (senior VP of creative affairs) describe their recent meetings with Warner Brothers head Alan Horn in terms of a visit to the woodshed with an angry dad. Horn doesn't deny it: "If you do it wrong," he says of developing sucessful films from the billion-dollar DC empire, "you're dead, you're out of there." In a line that will bring power-mad smiles to the faces of geeks everywhere, Robinov talks about no wanting to piss off the Comic-Con contingent, and speaks of the difficulty of making a good film while keeping the fanboys happy. "There's a massive interest and knowledge in the comic book industry, and it takes time to understand the characters and the history, where they've intersected with each other and what their worlds are," says Robinov, who probably spent high school going outdoors and dating girls, in the understatement of the year, "That's part of the education that we're going through." It's an education that Horn no doubt hopes won't prove too costly.

Hey, how about that? A whole post about superhero movies, and no mention of Watchmen! I may get out of this year alive after all...

OST: "Batman Begins"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:00 GMT

The Dark Knight is currently smashing box office records with the same alacrity that the Joker makes a pencil disappear, and as with the first Christopher Nolan Batman movie, its soundtrack is provided by two veteran industry hands in the person of James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer. While it seems like this time around, their work was heavily influenced by the seething, screeching, atonal score that Jonny Greenwood wrote for There Will Be Blood, it's still highly reminiscent of the work they did for Batman Begins.

The two had their work cut out for them when they accepted the assignment from Warner Brothers to score the rebooting of the Batman franchise. DC Comics' famed vigilante already had a number of memorable pieces of music associated with him: from the jaunty, swinging theme song to the campy '60s TV show composed by jazz veteran Neal Hefti to the brooding, chaotic main theme written by Danny Elfman for the first Tim Burton Batman (which later became the theme music for the celebrated Batman animated series), and even Johann Strauss's operetta Die Fledermaus have been associated with the hero in the past. Their goal when putting together a new score for Nolan's reboot of the franchise was to create something that conjured the proper tone of darkness and struggle without too obviously drawing on what had come before. Howard, whose previous work has included The Prince of Tides and The Sixth Sense, took charge of the main theme and the loftier passages, while Zimmer, the German-born composer who created the eerie score for The Ring as well as the memorable soundtrack to Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line, worked on the incidental music and quieter, more sinister passages. It was imperative that they create something that enhanced the brooding, bleak tone of Batman Begins while never threatening to overwhelm the action on screen or make the psychological development of the characters too obvious.

Happily -- if you can use that word to apply to something so grim-sounding -- they were successful. The soundtrack, while it lacks any songs as immediately catchy as Hefti's famous Batman theme or as universally recognizable as Elfman's, perfectly captures the tone and feel of the Christopher Nolan vision of Batman. The tracks (all of which are cleverly named for various species of bats) exactly invoke the right move, from the slow, magisterial main theme to the ponderous, somber music that accompanies the destruction of Wayne Manor to the mesmerizing, atonal shrieks that go along with the first attacks by the hideous Scarecrow. It's not quite strong enough to stand entirely on its own, except perhaps as mood music for a Halloween party, but it's still a terrific piece of scoring that illustrates the right way to make music and image mesh.

BEST TRACKS: "Verspertilio", the song that opens the film and the movie, shows how the main theme to a Batman film doesn't necessarily need to be bombastic or hummable to work well. "Molossus", which is the music by which the villainous Scarecrow terrifies his subjects, is both fitting and instantly recognizable thanks to its out-of-control slithering strings. And the climactic battle scene is accompanied by "Corynorhinus", which adeptly combines Howard's trademarked heavy, echo-laden piano chords and Zimmer's crushing percussion and taste for non-western tonal dynamics.

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"Watchmen": More Than Just Buying Dave Gibbons a New Boat

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:15:00 GMT

Now that Dark Knight is finally going to be opening nationwide, we can finally return to the natural occupation of the comic book fan: deranged obsession over Zack Snyder's upcoming movie adaptation of Watchmen.

As we've discussed before, one of the problems with the recent wave of successful motion picture adaptations of comic book properties is that while they've made tons of money for the producers of the movies, it hasn't worked the other way around. Comic book companies have slavered to get their properties on screen in recent years, in the hopes that audiences turned on by the big-screen adventures of Batman or the X-Men will follow those characters into their local comic book shop. This is especially important in these days of direct sales, when comic book sales are at a historical low, and people speak in non-hysterical terms about the demise of the industry. So it's worth noting that the millions in profit made my comic book movies hasn't generally been matched by a notable increase in comic book sales, one comic is bucking that trend: Watchmen.

One of the earliest comic book mini-series to take advantage of the 'graphic novel collection' format in the 1980s, Watchmen was already one of the most successful titles in DC's history, despite its indie sensibilities, adult storytelling, and complex, morally difficult story. But with the movie adaptation getting ever closer, its sales have shot way up -- and DC plans to capitalize on the interest in spades. They'll be promoting an aggressive three-pronged marketing attack to ensure that anyone sucked in by the movie to the degree that they absolutely must have the comic will be able to get one with not trouble. The triple attack includes a retailer discount for any shops that wish to carry the original softcover graphic novel; a new hardbound edition for collectors; and a deluxe edition featuring making-of material, rare artwork, and other bonus materials, the comic book equivalent of a fancy Criterion Collection disc.

Of course, to a hardcore Watchmen fan, this marketing push has an added benefit: unlike the film, with which he has disassociated himself, leaving all the profits to go to artist Dave Gibbons, writer Alan Moore still gets a share of the money from sales of the comic. So when the movie is released, those of you who still have a raggedy old copy of the softback might want to consider purchasing a movie tie-in edition...

More Goddamn Watchmen

Hellboy: The Letting Go

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:00:00 GMT

As more and more movies are made from comic books, the issues of creator's rights will increasingly pick at the film industry. With Marvel and DC products, it's generally not an issue -- not only are most of the creators long dead, but the characters themselves are corporate properties, held by two huge companies and not beholden to any single artist or writer. With independent comics, however, the issue grows much more complex. Some creators will be happy simply to sell the rights to their characters and stories for the kind of huge paycheck that only Hollywood can write; others will insist on being involved, to one degree or another, in the production of any film based on the characters they created. Frank Miller represents one extreme; displeased at the prospect of what liberties the movies would take with his characters, he decided to learn the film business himself so as to be able to exert maximum control over his properties in 300 and Sin City. (Although he didn't create the Spirit, he's taking a similarly proprietary approach in the creation of that movie.) Mike Mignola represents perhaps the oppisite end of the spectrum: always fiercely protective of the Hellboy character from the time it first appeared in Dark Horse Comics, he has learned when it's proper to let go of his creation in order to see it succeed on the big screen.

In an interview with Comics2Film regarding the new Hellboy 2: The Golden Army movie, which opens in wide release this weekend, Mignola discusses the differences between the comics and the film, the trust he came to develop with director Guillermo Del Toro when it came to creating the look of the movie, and how he had to learn when to let go of his own beliefs about what the movie should be and how it shouldn't be necessary for there to be major divergence between the two. "The first film was a loose adaptation, but it was coming off my work, and it was basically taking the Hellboy universe that I had created and translating it into del Toro's world. The second film, we chucked that idea after about eight hours because even in the first film, that character is already veering away from the world I created in the comic," says Mignola. "I know in the first film, he was making conscious decisions to try to suggest certain things that I do in the artwork...I'd love to think that he got some of that from studying my comic, but I think he's just a very careful craftsman."

(Of course, on the other other extreme, there's Alan Moore, who still refuses to take a dime from any movies based on his stories, on the theory that, since he had nothing to do with them, they're not his...)

Marvel Brings The Multiverse To Movies

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Recently, our own Phil Nugent took a look at the debut of Marvel Studios, the big-screen production arm of the comics company behind Spider-Man, the Hulk, and the Fantastic Four. While Marvel's been taking a critical beating lately with its flagship comics, losing retail ground to longtime rival DC, the opposite has been the case in the multiplex: Marvel's aggressive approach and multifaceted marketing has proven to be a success at the box office, and as a rule, Marvel's properties have outperformed DC's and brought in piles of cash for the company.

One of the reasons that Marvel became such a hit amongst comics fans in the 1960s was its 'multiverse' approach; unlike DC, which at the time told all their stories in a disconnected, separate manner, Marvel ran with the pretense that all their stories were taking place in the same world, at the same time, and pushed the idea that any one of their characters could show up in any of their titles. Fans took to the idea that all the stories were connected, that all the pieces mattered, and that what happened in one book made a difference in other books. The idea that the world of the Marvel Universe was unified and that the storytellers were actually creating pieces of a whole was so appealing that DC was forced to adopt it as an editorial policy for their own characters.

Now, as the Hollywood Reporter notes, Marvel is taking the same multiversal approach to their films. The much-discussed post-credits cameo by S.H.I.E.L.D. boss Nick Fury, to be reprised in the new Hulk film, hints at the cohesion that the studio hopes will make the upcoming Avengers movie a box office draw (and, incidentally, beat DC to the punch once again as Warner Brothers scrambles to figure out how to get a Justice League movie in the can). The driving force behind Marvel's unified approach in the comics was editor/writer/mastermind Stan Lee; with Marvel Studios, president Kevin Feige is stepping into that role and keeping the film franchises tied together. Warner Brothers has the money to make something similar happen, but will they give DC's editors a freer hand in film production -- and insist on an easing of the auteur approach that they've used in the recent past?

Superlawyer

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

You probably haven't heard of Marc Toberoff. But to the families, heirs and representatives of some of our culture's best-known characters and creations, he's Superman — and to the corporate entities that own those creations, he's Lex Luthor.

Toberoff is an intellectual properties attorney who specializes in representing claims by creators and their heirs against big studios, publishers and other media conglomerates who have made mega-millions off of their creations — often without paying more than a pittance to the people responsible. In his latest case, he's won a federal ruling that gives the family of Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, a financial stake in films made about the Man of Steel. It's a huge victory, and one that's likely to set a precedent that will also benefit the family of Superman's other creator, Joe Shuster. DC Comics, who owns the character, famously paid a pittance for the rights to Superman, and both Siegel and Shuster's families were nearly destitute for decades while DC (and its parent company, Warner Brothers) turned the character into one of the most recognizable — and marketable — icons in the world.

Of course, there's a downside to the pioneering work that Toberoff has done for the Siegels and many other people who found themselves cut out of the financial benefits of characters they helped create: his lawsuits have been so costly that they may delay or even completely scuttle a number of upcoming film and television projects involving Superman. But that's likely a small price to pay if it leads to media companies treating creators fairly from the start to avoid such litigation down the road.

Marvel Comics Is Ready for Its Close-Up

Phil Nugent — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

A long time ago when the world made sense, there were two kinds of comic books: DC comics and Marvel comics. And while Marvel reigned supreme at the comics shop, the company dearly wanted to break into the lucrative and ego-stroking business of licensing it characters for major motion pictures, and it was there that DC pantsed Marvel and took its lunch money. While DC was the home of Superman and Batman, Marvel was the home base of Howard the Duck. For years, Marvel's role in the Hollywood fod chain was epitomized by the 1994 Fantastic Four movie, a cheesy, cheap-looking affair that Marvel put into production without bothering to inform the people who worked on it that they had no intention of releasing it to theaters or even home video but were contractually obliged to make something if they wanted to hang onto the film rights to their own characters. All that started to change in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men, whose success the director was unable to duplicate with his later stab at rebooting Superman. A couple of years later, Sam Raimi's take on the Marvel flagship hero Spider-Man launched a major franchise and proved that Marvel could sire a blockbuster movie without Singer or Hugh Jackman modeling a haircut that could open bottles and cans. Since then, Marvel has had varying degrees of commercial success with a for-real Fantastic Four movie and its sequel, as well as Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and Elektra, a bust in theaters but more of an earner as a DVD release that allowed film connoisseurs to conduct a close study of Jennifer Garner's moist eyes and washboard abs in the tranquil setting of their own fortress of solitude. Even The Punisher managed to make it into theaters with John Travolta on the poster, which helps to set it apart from the 1989 straight-to-video version, with Dolph Lundgren grunting his lines as if his tight skull-face T-shirt were cutting off his circulation.

Stage two in Marvel's renewed campaign to take over the film industry goes into effect on May 2 when Iron Man, the first official production of Marvel Studios, is released to theaters. As reporter Geoff Boucher puts it, this marks "the first step in the company's quest to go from intellectual-property fount to a stand-alone Hollywood player that can greenlight big-time popcorn movies." Studio chairman David Maisel crows that "We're the first since DreamWorks started 14 years ago that can greenlight its own $100 million movies. It doesn't happen very often." In some ways, Marvel might still look pretty small to the big guys: the "studio" is modestly staffed and will rely mostly on Paramount to distribute their finished films. What they do have is the backlist of established characters, many of them created back in the golden days when the legendary Stan Lee and the uber-legendary Jack Kirby were striking sparks together, despite Marvel founder-publisher Martin Goodman's attempts to rein in his brainstorming boys by reminding them that their reading base consisted of "children and a few illiterate adults." (Boy, the more things change, the more things stay the same, huh?) As Maisel puts it, "We're not in the movie business, we're in the Iron Man business right now. Marvel owns the intellectual property. We have an Iron Man video game coming, the toys, the comics, we have an animated television show coming, a direct-to-DVD animated Iron Man movie last year. We're going to have an Iron Man ride at an amusement park in Dubai in a few years." They're also in the Ant-Man business--Edgar Wright, the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, is said to be ready to direct a film about the wee fellow--and of course, they're still in the Spider-Man business, with plans by Julie Taymor (Across the Universe) to launch a Spider-Man musical on Broadway. What may be most impressive is that they're in the Hulk business, too. Ang Lee's 2003 The Hulk movie was perhaps the highest-profile misstep of the new Marvel movie era, an ambitious, poker-faced effort that confused critics and disappointed audiences, though it did have the dignity of being a flop of the misguided-art-house variety instead of the underfunded direct-to-video sort. Now, just five years later, Marvel is going to reboot The Hulk with Ed Norton in the lead. The fact that Marvel is taking a second crack at the "property" so soon after the release of a film whose reception might have encouraged lesser mortals to sweep the Hulk under the rug for a generation or three shows an impressive degree of faith in their own product. Can another run at Howard the Duck be far behind? Has anybody run any tests to see how Hugh Jackman would look with an orange beak?