Tagged: Silver Surfer

Galactus to Appear in ‘Silver Surfer’ Film?

  • News
  • February 27, 2008

Galactus’ appearance in Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was a little underwhelming. Then again, so was the entire movie, so it was just par for the course.

When people think of Galactus, they think of a giant man in a purple and blue suit eating planets, not a vacuous gassy cloud that threatens to give Earth the dutch oven treatment.

Fans of the old school Galactus may be in luck. At Wondercon, Silver Surfer screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski commented on the status of Galactus in the upcoming film, which will be a prequel and detail the origins the giant planet eater and his silver herald.

According to Straczynski, the last Fantastic Four film refrained from showing Galactus in all his glory in order to leave his origin for the Silver Surfer film. Will we get to see Kirby’s version of Galactus or will we be subjected to another storm cloud? We won’t know for sure until 2009, when the movie will supposedly be released.

 (via SHH)

Silver Surfer and Fantastic Four in ‘Not Brand Echh’ #1

  • News
  • February 8, 2008

Over on the online home of ASIFA-Hollywood, a full, scanned story from the inaugural issue of Marvel’s parody series Not Brand Echh is posted in all of its old-school, self-effacing fun.

The story, titled "The Silver Burper" is a spoof on a Fantastic Four storyline by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby that ran through issues #57-60. ASIFA-Hollywood Director Stephen Worth, who posted the scan, does a good job of summing up the attraction of Not Brand Echh:

Current superhero comics (now referred to self-importantly as "graphic novels") take themselves VERY seriously. It’s rare for a publisher to allow a parody of its own characters… and unheard of for the creator himself to get the opportunity to make fun of his own creation. But back in the silver age of comics, cartoonists didn’t take themselves quite so seriously. Here we have the unthinkable… Jack Kirby and Stan Lee doing a parody of their own Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer comics for Marvel’s Not Brand Echh!

 

(via boingboing)

‘Justice League’ Artist on Film Delays and Silver Surfer Design

  • News
  • February 6, 2008

Daniel James Cox, a concept artist for the "Justice League" film, recently commented on the project’s delay over on his blog:

It’s unfortunate, but the Writer’s strike has delayed further pre-production on the Justice League movie (i was working on it as a concept artist/illustrator) until later in the year. as a comic fan, i’m happy because the script does need another rewrite. however, the art dept has been doing some amazing artwork, so the team and I will all assemble back at Fox Studios in June/July to pick up where we left off!

While that’s all very interesting, his behind-the-scenes look at the "Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer" art he created is definitely worth checking out.

 (Hat Tip: C2F)

Summer Box Office Closing Report

  • News
  • September 5, 2007

The summer is now officially over and our minds are already beginning to turn to… the Christmas movie season.  But first, let’s take stock and see where we are with comic book-based movies.  We have just one left for release this year, the feature version of Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night, but that’s waiting for the appropriate Halloween period.

Much has been made of the $4 billion summer box office and how it set a new record, until you adjust for inflation and then it doesn’t beat 2002.  Studios say that’s okay, because the hits will also prove strong sellers this holiday season in DVD (regular, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, collect them all!).  With average ticket prices creeping up to $6.85 (it’s $10.25 in Connecticut, where on earth is it only $6.85?), the receipts have also risen.

Here’s an updated look at the genre films released this year with their total box office to date followed by their budgets. Again, following that logic, 300 remains the clear winner by traditional Hollywood logic.  When all the home video sales get counted next spring, we’ll see if that remains the case.

Ghost Rider, $115,802,596 / $110,000,000

300, $210,250,922 / $65,000,000

TMNT, $42,273,609 / $34,000,000

Spider-Man 3, $336,530,303 / $258,000,000

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, $131,451,007 / $130,000,000

Stardust, August 10, $31,912,000 to date / $70,000,000

(more…)

WW-CHICAGO: Marvel Still Civil

  • News
  • August 12, 2007

Wild Weather on the East Coast Friday stranded most of the Mondo Marvel panelists in New York (hmmm… wonder how ComicMix‘s E.I.C. made it out that evening), leaving Joe Quesada and C. B. Cebuliski to fend for themselves while sharing with the crowd images and news from upcoming Marvel projects.

One other panelist, Rob Liefeld, who was there to talk about his new Killraven series. Apparently thought up at a bar in San Diego last year, Liefeld and Rob Kirkman will be bringing us an all-new take on the charactertarting fresh and looking to integrate Killraven into the Marvel Universe of the future – a world where our heroes are gone but their artifacts remain, one piece of art had Killraven holding Captain America’s shield. Look for the book in mid-2008. Reminding us that the creators of comics were and are comics fans themselves, Liefeld took some time to talk about his love for the character (and his DC counter-part Kamandi) during his childhood, you could hear the 11 year old Rob coming through loud and clear.

Luke Cage is back in his tiara and yellow shirt now that writer/artist (and Cartoon Network legend) Genny Tartakovsky has gotten a hold of him. The new artist on Punisher War Journal is Corey Walker. Doing his first work for Marvel, Tan Eng Huat (Doom Patrol) will be the artist on the mini-series Silver Surfer: In Thy Name, to be written by Simon Spurrier (2000 A.D.). I wonder if that news blows the ending of the current Silver Surfer mini.

Up next for Paul Jenkins will be a limited series drawn by Paul Guluay called Penance: Relentless about “the most hated man in America.”

Quesada and Cebuliski also said there are some big shake ups (an end?) coming to the Ultimates Universe by year’s end, and we’ll be seeing the "real" Nick Fury back in action next year.

Transformers with a side of Ratatouille

Box Office Mojo’s weekend movie estimates show that Transformers made a whopping $67.6 million, including $22 million on Friday alone. The total gross so far is $152.5 million since Wednesday. Per theater grosses were $16,853, more than double what the next ranked film, Ratatouille, took in.

The Pixar rat did okay, though, with a weekend haul of over $29 mil, and a per-theater gross of $7,367. So far, it’s made more than $109.5 million.

The other top-tenners are Live Free or Die Hard ($17.4 million), License to Wed ($10.4 million), Evan Almighty ($8.4 million), 1408 ($7.14 million), Knocked Up ($5.19 million), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer ($4.15 million), Sicko ($3.65 milion) and Ocean’s Thirteen ($3.525 million).

Knocked Up, which cost abou $30 milion, has earned more than $132 million so far this summer, making it the most profitable non-documentary film on the list so far.

Comic Book Box Office Examined

  • News
  • June 20, 2007

Comic books turned into motion pictures tend to be expensive exercises given the need to create costumes, simulate super-powers and make things sufficiently larger than life to appeal to filmgoers of all ages.

The traditional rule of thumb is that a movie has to earn three times its budget in domestic revenue to be considered profitable.  This way, the cost of production, backend money to producers and performers and marketing costs could be recouped.  After all, studios receive a sliding scale percentage of the box office gross.  For example, if a movie opens with $100 million that first weekend, chances are the studio sees a hefty percentage, anywhere from 50-80% of that income and as time passes, the ratio between studio and theater change so by week 12 (should a movie last that long), the theater gets the lion’s share.  Which helps explain why popcorn costs $5 a bucket – theaters need to earn profit somehow.

International box office as well as ancillary income (pay-per-view, hotels/airplane sales, home video/video downloads, related licensing) was always considered gravy.  Over the last few years, with movie theater attendance stagnant or down, studios have crowed about being profitable by counting all the money now.  

So, with all but one of this year’s comic book related films now showing, we here at Comic Mix thought it worth taking a peek at how well the films have performed.  The numbers below show the box office income to date followed by their production budget. (Marketing costs are an additional $20-40 million depending on film.)

Ghost Rider, $115,802,596 / $110,000,000

300, $210,250,922 / $65,000,000

TMNT, $42,273,609 / $34,000,000

Spider-Man 3, $330,021,137 to date / $258,000,000

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, $58,051,684 (opening weekend) / $130,000,000

Stardust, August 10

So, from the top, Ghost Rider should have earned $330,000,000 in domestic box office to recoup costs and be profitable.  Instead, it came up short but given how it was received, how it did around the world and how much licensing it brought it, Sony can consider it a hit, albeit a modest one.

Spider-Man 3, despite a critical drubbing, is nowhere near close to ever being profitable.  Unless you look at the international numbers which has it at $800,000,000 with a bullet and will clearly make money for Sony and Marvel.

On the other hand, the all-CGI Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a flop for New Line.  It did not stimulate toy and related merchandise sales nor did it generate any real buzz for the property.

The one movie to succeed in the traditional model was 300, which earned something like $30,000,000 in box office profit before taking in any wordwide box office income or licensing revenue.  Kudos to Zack Snyder and now we know why studios are willing to gamble on him in the future (which is good news for us since his next two films should be Watchmen and Ronin).

And here’s our schedule scoreboard for the future:

2008

Wanted, March 28

Iron Man, May 2

Incredible Hulk, June 13

Dark Knight, July 18

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, August 1

2009 & Beyond

Superman Returns 2, June 2009 (may be delayed until 2010)

Sin City 2, no date

Watchmen, no date

Captain America, no date

FF2 #1 @ $57.4M

  • News
  • June 17, 2007

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer debuted in the number one position with $57.4 million in receipts, representing an increase of $1.3 million over the first Four film’s opening weekend two years ago.

One might look at this as a giant "screw you" to the movie critics, who, of course, are used to it by now. That’s how elitism works.

Surfer to fly solo

  • News
  • June 15, 2007

silver-surfer-requiem-1-2nd-4117378Despite so-so advance buzz and a lack of screening for reviewers, 20th Century-Fox seems to believe in the Fantastic Four franchise.  As reported in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday, they are already looking to spinoff the Silver Surfer into his own film.

J. Michael Straczynski, already writing a Silver Surfer miniseries, Requiem, for Marvel, has been tapped to script the solo feature.

The Times said, “Well, perhaps the studio has heard the negative static, since it apparently hopes to spin the new Surfer franchise in a darker direction to attract the slightly older demographic of its X-Men films. If so, Straczynski, whose original screenplay The Changeling is on director Clint Eastwood’s slate, is a logical pick for the Surfer story line.” JMS is also the writer of the current Silver Surfer mini-series.

20th has already announced plans for spinoffs from its X-Men film franchise although neither the Wolverine or Magneto features seem any closer to actually being shot.

Next up from Marvel’s production slate will be their first self-produced film, Iron Man, coming in May 2008.

Artwork copyright 2007 Marvel Characters. All Rights Reserved.

7-Eleven Hosts Fantastic 4 Screenings

2873_1-1827424Having trouble staying awake during movie sequels this summer?  The 7-Eleven chain has created a new Slurpee energy drink with caffeine, taurine and guarana.  It’s so strong, you can see The Thing drinking it in Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer.

And that’s not all!  You can drink yours in a special collector cup.  Plus 7-Eleven is hosting advance screenings in 20 cities.

You say you want more?  Well, you can also go to your friendly neighborhood Spide — uh, I mean 7-Eleven and enter a contest during their month-long promotion.  Prizes include a chance to win a trip, a walk-on role in a Fox flick, and a whole lot of other suff.  According to the press release, "Visitors to http://www.slurpee.com, http://www.biggulp.com or http://www.7-eleven.com can register on the site to try to win instant prizes by playing the Fantastic 4 game."

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