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‘Jonah Hex’ Begins Shooting in March

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

Warner Bros. has given a green light to a Jonah Hex script from Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank).  "Pre-production will begin January 2009 before principal photography gets underway in March 2009 in either Louisiana, Georgia or Arizona,” the producers told Movie Blog. 

Actor Thomas Jane had himself done up to show what the Hex makeup could look like and essentially was begging to be cast in the title role. The directors have rejected Jane, despite being impressed by his efforts.  No casting has been announced for any of the roles nor has a story synopsis been revealed. The movie, though, is pencilled in by Warner Bros. for a 2010 release.

The antihero, created back in 1972 by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga, is one of the best characters published by DC Comics. Hex reached his creative heyday under writer Michael Fleisher during a long run from the 1970s through the 1980s.  Currently he is enjoyed renewed popularity through the monthly now written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, working with a variety of noteworthy artists. 

Batman Breaks $500 Million Barrier

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

The summer box office ended anemically although The Dark Knight did as expected, and sailed past the $500 million domestic box office mark.  By doing so in just 45 days puts it on a faster pace than the #1 champ, Titanic. With $11 million for the four-day weekend, the film stands at $504,696,000. Add in the $416,700,000 from foreign receipts and the film has earned Warner Bros. $919,121,000 (this despite our report that it’s tanking in Japan).

Warner Bros. has recently revised their estimate of the film’s final domestic number to $530 million, down from the $550 million it announced in mid-August. On the other hand, adjusted for inflation, the film rises from 49th on the All-Time chart to 30th as of this weekend and will likely climb a little higher before all is said and done. Not bad for a sequel to a super-hero movie.

To put this into additional perspective, The Dark Knight alone will account for almost one-eighth of the summer box office, which saw dozens of films open and many turned out to underperform. The summer b.o. is anticipated to close today with $4.2 billion in ticket sales.

Tropic Thunder remained atop the weekend chart in its third week of release, locating some $83.8 million along the way. Right behind it was the opening weekend for Babylon A.D. which was savaged by its director and the critics but still took in $9.7 million.  The better-reviewed Traitor, with Don Cheadle, opened in fifth place, taking in just $7.9 million.

Comedy had a tough summer as veterans Mike Meyers and Eddie Murphy crashed and burned and even inexpensive spoofs like the just opened Disaster Movie and the beer-soaked College opened poorly. Thunder and Pineapple Express were the exceptions, showing a shifting taste in theatrical comedies.

If any studio suffered, it was 20th-Century Fox which misfired with Meet Dave, Space Chimps, The Rocker, Mirrors, and most notably X-Files: I Want To Believe.
 

‘Simpsons’ Season 11 Box Set Due in October

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment announced the box set of the eleventh season of The Simpsons will be unveiled on DVD on October 7.

In addition to the stellar cast, the eleventh season of the seminal series featured guest voices Mel Gibson, Lucy Lawless, Kid Rock, Dick Clark, Tim Robbins, John Goodman, Parker Posey, Don Cheadle, Ron Howard, Willie Nelson, and Britney Spears.

The Simpsons The Complete Eleventh Season will feature a special Krusty The Clown themed box that  is promised to contain a surprise insert for the die hard fan.  The DVD collection will be available for the suggested retail price of $49.98 U.S./$69.98 Canada. (more…)

‘Smallville’ Season 8 Preview

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

Kristin Dos Santos at E!online provided fans of Smallville with a ton of information regarding the eight and final season of the CW series.  It returns to the air in September and leaves the farm community further behind as the action seems to be concentrated more and more on the Daily Planet in nearby Metropolis.

Darren Swimmer, one of the four executive producers trying to replace Alfred Gough and Miles Miller, explained, "[Clark]’s going to be seeking out the trouble, as opposed to reacting to trouble when it happens. One of his main motivations for going to the Daily Planet was to be somewhere where the information comes in."

As a result, not only does Clark now work at the DP, but Lois Lane (Erica Durance) and Jimmy Olsen (Aaron Ashmore) continue their employment.  In a nice twist, it’s Jimmy, not Lois, who starts to suspect Clark may be more powerful than a locomotive.  It’s his snooping around that makes Clark start to consider the need for a secret identity.

Lois and Clark meantime begin to see each other in a new light, as a maturing Clark recognizes it may be time to put his romance with Lana Lang behind him. "Erica Durance and Tom have such a great chemistry on camera together as Lois and Clark,” Swimmer noted. “I just love seeing the dailies. They’re going to be butting heads a lot, as usual. They’ll be teaming up on stories and getting into the typical hijinks together."
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Getting Screwed, by Mike Gold

  • News
  • September 1, 2008

We’re all familiar with the story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They created Superman but nobody would buy it so it sat in a drawer for a few years until an editor remembered seeing the submission and thought it would fill out the first issue of a new title that was lacking a lead story. Siegel and Shuster signed away their rights for something slightly in excess of a hundred bucks, although over the next decade they earned hundreds of thousands off of the property. The trouble is, the publisher was making millions.

Siegel and Shuster were getting screwed. They raised a stink about it and found themselves out of jobs. Later, after several publishing failures Siegel limped back to the offending publisher to work-for-hire for page-rate; Shuster was blind and couldn’t work for anybody.

Batman co-creator Bob Kane saw what was going on and offered to negotiate a contract that would: a) cover himself financially, b) somehow guarantee him sole creator credit, and c) screw the people who made Batman truly unique, people like co-creator Bill Finger and artists such as Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang. This scenario was repeated by a number of creators who became publishers or intellectual property owners years and years later.

So the moral standard is rather flexible. That’s business. That’s human nature – most businessmen aren’t all that different from Al Capone, who, in fact, was generally more appreciative of his end-users than he was of his competitors. Now, everybody cooperates benignly, being careful to operate out of a sense of mutual self-interest instead of an actual conspiracy that might constitute anti-trust. We’ve just endured eight years of a government that was totally dedicated to this concept. (more…)

Robert Downey, Jr. Turns Evil

  • Uncategorized
  • September 1, 2008

robert-downey-jr-1-1325559DreamWorks has decided to produce their own animated take on super-heroes with Master Mind.  Entertainment Weekly is now reporting that Robert Downey, Jr. may lend his voice as the lead character, opposite Tina Fey.

According to IMDB, the film is a “satirical take on super-hero movies, in which a notorious villain loses his oomph after he accidentally kills his nemesis.” It will be directed by Cameron Hood and Kyle Jefferson (First Flight) from a script by newcomers Alan J. Schoolcraft and Brent Simons. Ben Stiller’s production company, Red Hour Films, will co-produce with DreamWorks.  Paramount Pictures has this penciled in as a 2010 release.

Downey has previously worked on animated fare, including Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly.

Brett Ratner Likes ‘Guitar Hero’

  • News
  • August 31, 2008

Brett Ratner is no stranger to bringing pop culture icons to the screen.  After all, he directed the third X-Men film and is attached to bringing Valiant’s Harbinger to the screen.  He’s even handling the big screen adaptation of the video game God of War. But…Guitar Hero?

Ratner told MTV News, "I would love to do a Guitar Hero movie, if Activision would ever let me. I’m trying to convince them. It could be about a kid from a small town who dreams of being a rock star and he wins the Guitar Hero competition."

Ah, something unpredictable and surprising.

Meantime, the newest iteration of the global phenomena, Guitar Hero: World Tour, complete with microphone and drum kit, will be unleashed this fall in the $200 price category.
 

ComicMix Columns & Features for the Week Ending August 31, 2008

  • News
  • August 31, 2008

As we bid goodbye to August and so much more, we mark endings and new beginnings.  Our production head and cofounder Glenn Hauman returns with not one but two installments of his way-too-occasional column, our news editor Bob Greenberger’s been posting up a storm, and it’s rumored that ComicMix has some interesting things coming down the pike, but I couldn’t possibly say.  I just do a column and these roundups:

As we enjoy our federal holiday away from the office, let’s salute all those freelancers who don’t get paid when they don’t work — and, sadly more than a few who don’t get paid even when they do.

‘For Better or For Worse’ Calls it a Wrap

  • News
  • August 31, 2008

Just shy of its 29th anniversary, today Lynn Johnston completes her run on For Better or For Worse.  The comic strip, though, isn’t going away nor is it exactly going into reruns.

 

Instead, Johnston is going back to the beginning, when the strip debuted on September 9, 1979 and is cleaning up her art and dialogue.

She’s been reaching an end point for some time now and has repeatedly revised how she intends to carry on once the storyline ends.  One thing has remained certain, she wanted to bring the characters full circle so John and Elly are now the grandparents and Michael’s children are about the same age as he was when the strip first arrived.

"All of September will be brand-new material," Johnston explained to The Washington Post. "In October, it will be [a ratio of] 50-50. The color Sunday comics will be all-new material. . . . I think it will be 50-50 for the first year, at least."

Johnston continues to work in her Toronto studio although does so after recently separating from her husband, an act she says now frees her. "I really wanted to be happy as a couple and make everything right, but things became more stressful. . . . It made me look again at my career. I thought I would now be a retired woman with my Tilley hat and sitting on a cruise ship and going to the Galapagos," Johnston said.

 

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‘Heroes’ Season Debut Details

  • News
  • August 31, 2008

With Heroes returning for season three on September 22, NBC has released official descriptions of the first two hours.

Here’s NBC’s description of "The Second Coming": "The first chapter of Volume 3: Villains kicks off moments after shots rang out, as the shocking identity of Nathan’s (Adrian Pasdar) assassin and the reasons why the Texas press conference had to be cut short are revealed–immediately throwing Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) and Matt (Greg Grunberg) into unexpected, uncharted territory.

"With his powers partially restored, Sylar (Zachary Quinto) decides a visit to Claire (Hayden Panettiere) could give him a boost. Meanwhile, in Tokyo, Hiro (Masi Oka) and Ando (James Kyson Lee) are charged with safeguarding a family secret that could split the planet apart and discover that the path to a grim future starts with shady speedster, Daphne (guest star Brea Grant).

"In New York City, thanks to Maya (Dania Ramirez), Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) makes a startling breakthrough that could change the world–or just destroy his. And who is Tracy Strauss?"
  (more…)

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