Author: Robert Greenberger

Forget that god awful looking CGI pup we’ve seen in the movie trailers.  The one, true Underdog will be collected on a three volume DVD box set this summer.  Released by Genius Products, under license from Classic Media, the $29.98 collection will feature digitally re-mastered episodes with Wally Cox (the voice of Underdog) sounding better than ever.  Not only that, the DVDs will collect the 1960s television series as originally broadcast so fans can delight in the additional escapades of Hunter, Go Go Gophers, Klondike Kat, Tennessee Tuxedo, King and Odie, Tootie Turtle and Commander McBragg.  The release date has been listed as both July 24 and August 6 while the god awful-looking CGI movie opens on August 4.

Trivia point: did you know that the meek, sheepish Wally Cox once was Marlon Brando’s roommate? Underdog, indeed!

Emile Hirsch, the relatively unknown actor, has been cast as Speed Racer in Joel Silver’s live-action adaptation of the beloved Japanese anime from the 1960s.

Hirsch has already been seen in Alpha Dog and Lords of Dogtown and will next be seen in Sean Penn’s Into the Wild, opening in September.  He told E!  the film would be “Blade Runner meets Andy Warhol meets pop art.”  No other casting has been confirmed thus far.

Speed Racer is on track for its May 9, 2008 release with filming set for Potsdam, Germany this spring and summer.  Silver has already announced that the film will be intended for all audiences and is aiming at a high octane G-rating.

We’ve spent the last few weeks looking at how Hollywood operates, optioning properties, including comic books, which they think might work as a movie or television series. With the success of 300, we also paused to examine how full the calendar was getting the next few years and wondered if a glut was coming.

If that’s the case, what alternatives might there be?

Television remains skittish with comic book properties despite the runaway success of Heroes. Beyond Smallville, there are no comics-related shows on prime time and none likely to be added to the 2007-08 schedule (to be announced in May). Cable, with dozens and dozens of channels, has one: Painkiller Jane on Sci-Fi.

Animated fare, either for Saturday mornings or weekday afternoons, has turned away from comic books for source material, preferring anime imports or original productions. The last handful of attempts have not been resounding successes such as the WB’s Legion of Super-Heroes.

But there are new signs of life in the still growing Direct to DVD market, a.k.a. D2DVD. Here, producers go for the familiar as they crank out sequel after sequel on shoestring budgets and churn them out like so much shovelware, clogging the shelves at mass merchandisers from Sam’s Club to Best Buy. In 2006, D2DVD releases generated $1.3 billion in revenue, and that’s expected to grow 5% to 7% this year, according to Variety.

This is fertile ground for all the comic book publishers but so far only the majors are exploiting it to the fullest.

The earliest releases were not from DC, but from Warner animation, starting with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. The story worked and the look matched that of the successful Bruce Timm/Paul Dini animated series and played better than expected so got upgraded to feature film release. Unfortunately, the subsequent efforts: Batman & Mr. Freeze: Sub-Zero, Batman vs. Dracula and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman fared less well both creatively and financially.

The nadir may have been hit last year when they rushed out the ill-conceived Superman: Brainiac Attacks which resembled neither the animated continuity nor the Superman Returns feature film. Both were played off on the Cartoon Network.

Fortunately, it came and went with little fanfare and was totally eclipsed last summer when DC announced they were finally working as full partners with Warner animation in creating animated adaptations of classic DC stories from the company’s rich and deep library.

The first four announced releases, for those who missed the news, are:

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