Since Dark Knight hit the screen, the world of superheroes in film may not be the same again. With the inevitable success of Watchmen in 2009 and many more non-cape-wearing heroes on the way to theaters, we’ve collected just where things lie on some of our favorite Vertigo and WildStorm franchises, and how far we could be to seeing them at the local multiplex. For the super-heroes, see yesterday’s report.

Y the Last Man

New Lien optioned the recently completed  Y the Last Man several years ago and creator Brian K. Vaughn wrote the initial screenplay. In 2007, New Line assigned the stalled project to the creative team behind Disturbia — director DJ Caruso and screenwriter Carl Ellsworth — with producer David Goyer.

In an interview with Caruso, he claimed that the story was too much for just one movie, and they decided to focus on making the first film primarily about issues 1-14 of the comic series. The entire series would be plotted into three films and rumors have been circulating that Shia LaBeouf was in line for the role at one point. Caruso and LaBeouf worked together of Disturbia and Eagle Eye and LaBeouf expressed interest in the role.

Caruso told Slash Film in July, “I was talking to Shia [LaBeouf] about this yesterday when we were looping him, because he really wants to do it as well, I would like to prep this movie in October, and start shooting it by January. Warner Bros keeps saying ‘We need movies for 2010′ I’m like ‘We’re the movie!’” said Caruso. “[Shia] wants to do it, I want to do it. I think we just need to worry about him being exhausted, so I told him, if I prep it in the fall and we start in January, that’s a nice big break.”
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Columbo is one of television’s most beloved characters thank to the sophisticated writing of Richard Levinson and William Link in addition to the performance from Peter Falk.  The rumpled detective appeared for seven seasons on the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie and then returned for a series of telefilms in the late 1980s.

All seven seasons were collected between 2004 and 2006 with the 1989 set of telefilms released in 2007.

Universal is finally releasing the 1990 set of telefilms on February 3 according to TV Shows on DVD. The set of six episodes will come on three discs and retail for $26.98.  The titles for the record are:

•    "Columbo Cries Wolf"
•    "Agenda for Murder"
•    "Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo"
•    "Uneasy Lies the Crown"
•    "Murder in Malibu"
•    "Columbo Goes to College"

Guest performers include Deidre Hall (Days of our Lives), Ian Buchanan (The Bold and the Beautiful), Gigi Rice (The John Larroquette Show), Louis Zorich (Mad About You), Patrick McGoohan (The Prisoner), Stanley Kamel (Monk), Denis Arndt (Picket Fences), Bruce Kirby (Kojak), Helen Shaver (Poltergeist: The Legacy), Ian McShane (Deadwood), Teresa Ganzel (Transylvania 6-5000), Nancy Walker (McMillan & Wife), Dick Sargent (Bewitched), baseball great Ron Cey, Brenda Vaccaro (Midnight Cowboy), Andrew Stevens (Emerald Point N.A.S.), Katherine Cannon (Beverly Hills 90210) and Robert Culp (Greatest American Hero).
 

The passage of time sometimes seems like a dream when reflecting back, which is appropriate when you realize that it’s been 20 years since Neil Gaiman, along with a host of brilliant artists, first introduced the world to The Sandman and created a series that is considered required reading by many.

10 years ago, Gaiman released The Sandman: The Dream Hunters, as a prose novella and a standalone story that could be read without prior knowledge of the earlier volumes, with illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano. Final Fantasy fans may be familiar with Amano for his design contributions to the popular videogame series.

This Wednesday, DC is marking the 20th anniversary of Sandman with the first of four issues of the comic adaptation of The Dream Hunters by P. Craig Russell, an artist whose career spans over 30 years across various publishers and genres in the comic industry. The first issue of The Sandman: The Dream Hunters comic adaptation will feature a regular cover by Yuko Shimizu with a variant cover by Russell.

P. Craig Russell is also no stranger to collaboration with Neil Gaiman as a contributor to the original Sandman series. His most recent work was the graphic novel adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline from Harper Collins, which is also due out as an animated feature in theaters next year.

I recently spoke with Russell about The Dream Hunters, Neil Gaiman’s confessions of originality, and the art of adaptation.

ComicMix: For those who may not have read the original prose story, what is The Dream Hunters about?

P. Craig Russell: It’s an original story told in the style of a Japanese fairy tale. It’s the story of a fox who falls in love with a young monk. She falls in love with him and his soul is stolen by a rich onmyōji, who is sort of like a wizard, and the fox then takes her revenge on the onmyōji.

If you haven’t read it, it’s a beautifully written story and I just found out for the first time in Neil’s notes that he just wrote for the first issue of Dream Hunters that the story he told in his afterword to the original book, was that this was based on an old Japanese fairy tale which, in fact, it wasn’t. He made it up entirely. (more…)