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Where
to begin today? There's a lot of activity of interest to Fanboy
Planet readers, so let's dive right in by appeasing the Joss
Whedon fans...always
a good idea...
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There's
joy in Whedonville today...
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Firefly:
The Movie!
It's a
bright spot for fans of Joss Whedon's work, after a few weeks
of emotional beatings. Universal has given the greenlight
for Firefly the Movie, only it's not called that. The
big-screen version of Joss' late lamented (and short-lived)
Fox series is to be called Serenity, after the ship
captained by the rebel Malcolm Reynolds.
Most,
though not all, of the cast has been confirmed for the film,
scheduled to start shooting in June for a summer 2005 release.
Not yet back aboard are Ron Glass (Book, the preacher) and
Alan Tudyk (Wash the pilot). But give them time.
What this
means for comics fans is that Joe Quesada had better have
truly madly deeply learned his lesson from Kevin Smith and
gotten a complete run of scripts for Joss' new Astonishing
X-Men series.
Cage
Director
John Singleton (Boyz n The Hood, Shaft) once again
has circled Luke Cage, Hero For Hire. This isn't the first
time he's been attached to a Marvel movie; for a while he
was rumored to be interested in Black Panther and, a few years
back, hey, Luke Cage.
But this
time it's officially on his docket with Columbia Pictures,
from a script by Ben Ramsey. Producing are Avi Arad and Neal
Moritz, probably the element that sealed the deal, as Moritz
gave Singleton his last job, on 2Fast2Furious.
The rundown
on the film doesn't sound like a radical departure from the
comic, except that it won't be as embarassingly stuck in the
seventies. Described in a press release as "...a gang
tough, after being convicted of a crime, who volunteers to
undergo an experimental procedure to get his sentenced reduced.
The experiment leaves Cage with bulletproof skin and superhuman
strength and stamina. Using his new abilities, Cage breaks
out from prison and goes after the criminals that set him
up."
Cage's
partner in Heroes For Hire, Iron Fist, has a separate deal
over at Artisan, announced last week along with The Punisher
2 and Black Widow.
Of course,
even officially being on the docket doesn't mean a thing.
Just ask...
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One of
these men will be Marv.
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Robert
Rodriguez Comic Book Crazy!
After rocking comic book fans last week with his announcement
that he was moving forward on a film adaptation of Frank Miller's
Sin City, Rodriguez let slip this week that he's got
Edgar Rice Burroughs' A Princess of Mars in his sights
as well. And by rocking fans, we mean to say that he's actually
stirred up a whole lot of controversy.
Oh, sure, he's fast, he's efficient, and he's true to his
own vision. But Rodriguez is also tremendously uneven in that
vision. For proof, see the tremendous crash and burn of Spy
Kids 3-D, or Once
Upon A Time In Mexico, a movie that is extremely cool
even as it sucks hard. (Yeah, I dug it; I just feel bad about
it in the clear light of day.)
What seems to have made fans of Miller's book nervous is
the rumored casting of Josh Hartnett in the lead role. Not
having read Sin City (let the stoning begin), we have no opinion
to offer, except that when Hartnett was allegedly up for Superman,
I fought dry heaves on an hourly basis.
As for
A Princess of Mars, that project has been on and off
of production slates all over Hollywood for almost a decade.
So we'll see if it actually comes to fruition with Rodriguez,
though at least he has a studio involved, Paramount.
More likely
this is just a moment for Rodriguez to make himself look really
busy and viable, and in Hollywood, you don't actually have
to accomplish everything you say you're going to do. It's
all perception. A couple of years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger
was committing to The Iron Crown, a Westworld
remake, and Doc Savage, all as a ploy to keep his name
in the news while he plotted taking over the state. For Doc
Savage fans, things worked out better this way.
All this
flurry of Rodriguez activity also brings up another question:
what about Madman, a project he has promised and put
off for at least three years?
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