Luke Cage Being Eyed for the Silver Screen
Geoff Boucher at the Los Angeles Times reports that Luke Cage is likely to be one of the first next level Marvel heroes to get the film treatment. Marvel Studios announced a few weeks ago that the time had come to look at the smaller characters for lower budgeted films but no formal announcements had been made.
Marvel continues to develop Ant Man with director Edgar Wright, which may also fall into this category and Stan Lee mentioned Doctor Strange as a strong candidate to perform film magic sooner than later.
Cage was first introduced in 1972 in Hero for Hire, from writer Archie Goodwin and artists George Tuska and Billy Graham. He’s been a fixture ever since and in the last few years has gained prominence under the pen of Brian Michael Bendis who featured him first in Alias then the New Avengers. As part of the Heroic Age refresh of the Marvel Universe, he takes center stage in Thunderbolts beginning with issue #144 with writer Jeff Parker and artist Kev Walker, on sale May 26.
“Speaking of Luke Cage, a.k.a. Power Man, I hear that there’s more talk underway about putting the urban hero into his own film and that a notable Hollywood star is now having (very) preliminary talks with Marvel Studios about the property and its potential,” Boucher wrote.
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If you’re anything like me, your interest in the upcoming animated Marvel Super Hero Squad Show was pretty low, based as it is on a line of toys and comic strips meant for kids too young to know that proper superhero stories involve lots of rape and horrible gory messes. Which is to say, I thought it would be fine for its target demographic, but a little too lowbrow to have the same level of grown men in tights and Neil Patrick Harris musical numbers that the discerning adult requires.
Stan Lee will executive produce a television adaptation of Hero for Showtime according to 
Ang Lee’s [[[Hulk]]] film failed because he spent too much time on the Jekyll/Hyde aspects, the very ones that inspired Stan Lee. After all these years, people wanted to see the Hulk leap and smash things. When he leapt, we cheered, but there just wasn’t enough of it.
, is largely the Army hunting the Hulk as Bruce Banner searches for a cure. While that worked fine in the 12-page [[[Tales to Astonish]]] stories, it’s not nearly enough for a feature film. The biggest problem with Zak Snyder’s story is that the Super Soldier formula that is now linked to the Hulk and the Abomination is clearly able to turn people into weapons of mass destruction and all the military sees is a weapon. Not a single person in uniform saw it as anything else and frankly, we’ve seen this theme before and done better elsewhere.
Attention, true believers! Next month’s issue of manga magazine Shonen Jump will feature the premiere of Stan Lee and Hioryuki Takei’s Ultimo, which was announced back in April during New York Comic Con.
Right up front this week, let’s publish our (forgive me for shouting) RECOMMENDED READING: Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now Magazine from TwoMorrows.
cartoon series so succesful. Teamed up with him in developing the series for television is Producer and Supervising Director Victor Cook, whose resume includes working on the Hellboy animated film 
Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one…
