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Disney shanghais McG for ‘20,000 Leagues Under The Sea’

  • News
  • January 8, 2009

Because Disney has done so well with sea pictures lately, they’ve just signed a deal with McG (real name Joseph McGinty Nichol, currently at work on Terminator: Salvation) to direct its family picture 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo, according to  Variety. Based on the Jules Verne novel, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Disney’s first adaptation of the book came out in 1954 with Kirk Douglas, James Mason, Peter Lorre, Paul Lukas and that big old visual effects Oscar winning giant squid. It was the studio’s first live-action movie.

But the big question I have is this: since they gutted the original 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at Walt Disney World to make room for a Finding Nemo ride, what’s going to be the next creative demolition at the park? Frontierland better watch its back…

ComicMix QuickPicks – January 7, 2009

  • Uncategorized
  • January 8, 2009

Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* Amazingly, I don’t think we’ve ever gotten around to linking to Mark Ryan’s blog. Mark’s writing The Pilgrim for us when he’s not doing work on Transformers 2, but you should read the other stories he tells. And he gets women like Jenn Korbee (right) to perform with him.

* Recession? How can we be in a recession when we can buy a replica Infinity Gauntlet for less than $310?

* Economic Meltdown Funnies. Because it’s all so, y’know, funny. (Actually, it’s a very good explanation of the problems, and is pretty painless to read. Go look.)

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

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Review: ‘Bottomless Belly Button’ by Dash Shaw

  • Uncategorized
  • January 7, 2009

bottomless-belly-button-6339298Bottomless Belly Button
By Dash Shaw
Fantagraphics, June 2008, $29.99

Wrapped up inside [[[Bottomless Belly Button]]] is the realistically-depicted story of a family – aged parents, three grown children, and few others – coming all together for one last time as the parents divorce after forty years of marriage. But Dash Shaw is in no hurry to tell that story; he wraps the three sections of this graphic novel in metaphor and metafiction, graphically depicting the Looney family and their world in various forms – as water, as sand, as maps, as diagrams and lists. Shaw takes the time and space to tell his story slowly, to circle around it from all sides, and to focus on each member of the Looney family in turn.

David Looney is the patriarch: his word has always been law. We see the least of him in Bottomless Belly Button, but he’s clearly diminished from the authoritarian, demanding man we see in flashbacks – he’s no longer in charge. The divorce probably isn’t his idea.

Dennis Looney, the older son – the good son. Married, with a baby. Somewhere in his mid ‘30s. Dennis can’t accept the divorce – in the Looney’s view of the world, families always stick together, because families are the core building blocks of the world. Something must be wrong – something he can fix. So he gets angry inappropriately, takes long runs on the beach to think through things, roams restlessly through the house, looking for clues and reasons for something he can’t accept.

(more…)

Licensing the 11th Doctor Who

  • News
  • January 7, 2009

With Matt Smith taking on the role of Doctor Who, BBC Worldwide says the property will be one of its licensing priorities through 2009, series 5 featuring the new Doctor in 2010, and forward. BBC Worldwide has renewed and extended the Doctor Who master toy license with Character Options, which has held the license since 2005.  BBC Worldwide is developing new style elements for licensees for series 5 with product expected to be available in summer 2010, probably just in time for the San Diego Comic-Con. 

Meanwhile this year will see the release of a range of items, including the launch of Time Squad collectible figures in spring, followed by repackaged and revamped Cyberman Age of Steel products to tie-in with the holiday 2009 special.

So if you’re the sort of person who just wasn’t satisfied with spending two hundred dollars for a remote control Dalek to terrorize your pet with, you’re in luck. And thank you for helping to stimulate the economy, even if you’re adding to the international trade imbalance.

‘The Prisoner’ streams for free on AMC

  • News
  • January 7, 2009

There was never a TV show before like The Prisoner. You could say that there hasn’t been a show like it in the forty-two years (!) since.

What? You’ve never seen it? Dude. I mean, dude. Seriously.

Luckily, now you can see them all. I don’t guarantee that you’ll understand them, but you can see them.

To promote its new reinterpretation of the show which just wrapped shooting and scheduled to premiere in November, AMC is now streaming the original series in full screen. This marks the online debut of all seventeen episodes of the classic British series starring Patrick McGoohan, which originally aired in England from 1967-1968.

And when you’re done with that, go buy the DC Comics trade paperback, which hits the flavor of the original series and yet somehow provides an ending. It was one of the first things I got to work on as a production guy at DC, and it impressed the hell out of me.

Japanese ‘Watchmen’ trailer out

  • News
  • January 7, 2009

Hooooooo boy. If nothing else, it highlights the difference in how they’re marketing this… even more paranoid than the original, if that’s possible. And if you’re like me, you caught even more places where the screen matches the page.

What do you think about it?

PREVIEW: ‘Batman: The Brave and the Bold’ with the Outsiders, Wildcat, and… B’wana Beast?

  • News
  • January 7, 2009

We’ve obtained preview footage of the Batman: The Brave and the Bold episode, "Enter the Outsiders" airing this Friday, January 9 on Cartoon Network at 8:00 PM, guest starring R. Lee Ermey as Wildcat. And yes, that really is Black Lightning appearing in a DC Comics animated series after thirty years. Congratulations to BL creators Tony Isabella and Trevor Von Eeden.

In this week’s episode Batman and his mentor Wildcat face off against a group of teens– the Outsiders– whose violent pranks turn to criminal activity under the control of the evil Slug. Take a look… (more…)

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ComicMix QuickPicks – January 6, 2009

  • Uncategorized
  • January 7, 2009

200px-ponyo-6342266Today’s installment of comic-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest…

* Producers Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy and Pixar’s John Lasseter are working to guarantee a huge success for this summer’s release of Hayao Miyazaki’s new animated movie, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, according to Variety.  Their aim is to increase the number of movie screens where Ponyo will open here, and thus the box office receipts, from Studio Ghibli’s previous US record for Spirited Away, which earned $10.1 million on 714 screens according to Box Office Mojo.  The English voiceover cast for Ponyo will feature Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Cate Blanchett, Liam Neeson, Betty White, Lily Tomlin and Cloris Leachman.  Ponyo was Japan’s biggest movie of 2008, grossing $165 million.

* Kyle Baker reviews The Spirit.

* Dan Goldman is telling the story of the 2008 election, and has a twenty page preview available as a PDF. I won’t spoil the ending for you.

* Happy Public Domain Day for the rest of the world. We won’t have any new entries here for a few years.

* I nominate this as the top anime fansub of 2008. Do I have a second to the motion?

Anything else? Consider this an open thread.

New heights in the Rob Liefeld swipe file

  • News
  • January 6, 2009

Okay, let me see if I have this straight. From Rich Johnston:

Rob Liefeld will be putting out a "SMASH! Extreme!" #0 re-printing of Smash’s previous appearances by Jeph Loeb and Liefeld from Image in April.

Rob says, "This will contain a new story which frees Smash! from his bonds and lead into the multi-part SMASH! storyline told in a series of specials pitting SMASH! against the Extreme universe. Then in May, we get ‘Smash! Brigade’ from Marat Mychaels and ‘Smash! Youngblood,’ ‘Smash! Prophet’ and ‘Smash! Supreme’ to follow through the year."

Smash! apparently is this big, shall we say, hulking individual pictured to the right who has been in exile for a good long time after stealing Elliot S. Maggin’s exclamation point, but he returns to wreak havoc on the entire universe in a company-wide crossover– waging war on the world, as it were.

Psst. Rob. The pants are what’s supposed to be purple, not the skin.

Oh, and eventually, it’ll end in a book called SMASH ASSEMBLED! where presumably an SOS goes out to Doom’s 4, but some mischevous individual reroutes the call to a bunch of other heroes who band together and fight him.

And some other even more mischevous individual reroutes the call to Marvel’s legal department. Which won’t be a problem because as we all know, Rob Liefeld is a stickler for credit.

 

Are comics really recession proof?

  • News
  • January 6, 2009

The general consensus is that during hard times, people stay at home and turn to cheap entertainment to save money. And various and sundry players across the net have claimed that comics always do well in recessionary times.

Except, it turns out, those two widely held beliefs are in direct conflict.

Aaron Albert at About.com (you can tell he’s in comics with alliteration like that) runs the numbers on entertainment bang for the buck per minute, and comics are the worst deal of the bunch:

If we suppose that it takes 15 minutes to read a standard comic book what kind of deal are we getting?

 

  • $3.99 Comic – ECPM’s – 27 cents
  • $2.99 Comic – ECPM’s – 20 cents
  • Movie – $10 (Average running time lets say 1hr 30 min.) – ECPM’s – 11 cents
  • Rental Movie – $5 (Same time as above) – ECPM’s – 5.5 cents
  • DVD – $20 (Typical 2 disc with, say, 2 hrs bonus material) – ECPM’s – 7 cents
  • Video Game – $60 (Average length, around 15-20 hrs to complete) – ECPM’s – 5-7 cents
  • MMORPG – (A game like WOW costs $15 a month with the average player putting 22 hrs a week…its scientific, I Googled it) – ECPM’s – 2/10 cents (yes that’s two tenths of a cent per minute)

The conclusion is obvious, particularly when you see how many people will read free comics available online.

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