Jump to content
Hondo's Bar

Movie & TV Blargh


Recommended Posts

...why not in comic book movies thread? ah well.

 

see, i dont see this as a negative, delays or not: marvel cut those deals - specifically with x-men - where they (as i recall) signed off a way-too-big chunk of the money/royalties just to get the movies done and bring in revenue when they were struggling. i dont know how long these contracts are for, but man, shady or not, if disney could get marvel studios in charge of its biggest properties - so they can start banking more heavily off their own creative works, and maybe even see the company itself do well, not just avi arad - id be happy to see it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mel had plenty of reason to get pissed off, it's kind of a dickish move to bring up something shitty that anybody did any earlier than recently. I mean sure, people made Ike Turner wife-beater jokes for decades after the crimes in question happened, but they at least had the decency not to do it to the man's face. There's plenty of loved celebrities that have done far worse things than getting drunk and saying some stupid shit. Also, playing the footage after the interview has officially ended: dick move, straight up.

 

As for the Marvel thing, if they can stop Sony's Spider-Man reboot monstrosity from existing then I don't even care what Disney does after that.

 

EDIT: FUCKSICLES! This is Baytor.

Edited by FireDownBelow
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
Deadline Hollywood's report regarding Marvel Studios' and director Joe Johnston's search for Captain America. Here is their wish list:

 

Chace Crawford (GOSSIP GIRL)

John Krasinski (THE OFFICE)

Scott Porter (FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS)

Mike Vogel (CLOVERFIELD)

Michael Cassidy (Lots o' TV)

Patrick Flueger (BROTHERS and THE 4400)

Garrett Hedlund (TRON LEGACY)

 

Yeesh. This is their "wish" list? Krasinski might surprise though and pull a Keaton, but it's still not looking so rosy for Cap fans, like Senor Itchy Vag.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Holy crap

 

The full original cut of Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Metropolis was thought lost for the better part of the last century. When a nearly complete copy of the film was discovered in Argentina in 2008, restoration experts in Berlin were almost immediately put to work repairing and completing a version of the film that is as close to the original intent as modern audiences have ever witnessed. The restored original version of Metropolis was screened this past February, nearly 83 years since its initial premiere in 1927.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

damn this kinda sucks

 

Director quits 'Hobbit' film over production delay (AP)

Source: AP Mon May 31, 2010, 3:48 am EDT

Buzz up!

 

 

FILE - In this Aug. 19, 2008 file photo, Mexican director Guillermo del Toro poses for the media during a photo call to promote the movie 'Hellboy 2-The Golden Army' in Berlin. Del Toro said Monday, May 31, 2010, that production delays have forced him to quit the planned film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's 'The Hobbit,' a two-part prequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson's blockbuster trilogy 'Lord of the Rings.' (AP Photo/Miguel Villagran, File)

 

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Hollywood director Guillermo del Toro said Monday that production delays have forced him to quit the planned film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit," a two-part prequel to New Zealand filmmaker Peter Jackson's blockbuster trilogy "Lord of the Rings."

 

"In light of ongoing delays in the setting of a start date for filming The Hobbit, I am faced with the hardest decision of my life," del Toro told a "Lord of the Rings" fan website.

 

"After nearly two years of living, breathing and designing a world as rich as Tolkien's Middle Earth, I must, with great regret, take leave from helming these wonderful pictures," he said, noting the film still hadn't been given the green light by MGM, the struggling Hollywood studio.

 

Matt Dravitzki, a spokesman for "Hobbit" producer and "Lord Of The Rings" director Jackson, said del Toro would not be speaking to reporters Monday.

 

The announcement by del Toro reflected Jackson and del Toro's "full sentiments at this time," he said.

 

Del Toro would continue to co-write the screenplays with Jackson and his wife, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens.

 

Jackson reached a deal in late 2007 to make two films of "The Hobbit." He is serving as joint executive producer with Walsh.

 

Last week, del Toro, who directed "Pan's Labyrinth," "Blade II" and the two "Hellboy" movies, told journalists the "Hobbit" films, which have been plagued by delays, still hadn't been given the go ahead.

 

"There cannot be any start dates until the MGM situation gets resolved," del Toro said. "They do hold a considerable portion of the rights."

 

Reports emerged late last year that MGM was teetering on bankruptcy and del Toro said those issues had caught the "Hobbit" films in a "tangled negotiation."

 

"We have designed all the creatures. We've designed the sets and the wardrobe. We have done animatics and planned battles sequences ... We are very, very prepared for when it is finally triggered," he said.

 

Jackson told http://www.TheOneRing.net: "We feel very sad to see Guillermo leave The Hobbit, but he has kept us fully in the loop and we understand how the protracted development time on these two films, due to reasons beyond anyone's control, has compromised his commitment to other long term projects.

 

"The bottom line is that Guillermo just didn't feel he could commit six years to living in New Zealand, exclusively making these films, when his original commitment was for three years. Guillermo is one of the most remarkable creative spirits I've ever encountered and it has been a complete joy working with him."

 

He would discuss options for a new director with MGM this week, Jackson told the website.

 

"We do not anticipate any delay or disruption to ongoing preproduction work," he said.

 

Last month, Jackson dismissed rumors that the "Hobbit" movies have been delayed by production problems, insisting the project was still in its early stages.

 

He told Moviefone.com , "Well, it's not really been delayed, because we've never announced the date. I mean it's sort of interesting because the studio has never greenlit The Hobbit, so therefore The Hobbit has never been officially announced as a 'go' project, nor have we ever announced a date."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It sucks in that Del Toro won't be directing the Hobbit, but it rocks in that he won't be sitting in New Zealand gathering moss when he's supposed to be out creating great movies for all to see. Besides, he did all his concepts and I'm sure Peter Jackson can cobble something together from that. Besides, by the time MGM get their shit together/the rights get sold, Del Toro might be free to direct it again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Secrets and Celebrations From 'The Goonies' Reunion

by Joseph Brannigan Lynch · June 7, 2010

 

Since 1985, the Steven Spielberg-produced movie "The Goonies" has thrived as an enduring cult classic. To mark the 25th anniversary of the film, thousands of fans and original cast members, including Corey Feldman and Sean Astin, made the pilgrimage to Astoria, Oregon, where much of the film was shot, to celebrate the Goonies' never-say-die attitude.

 

In the movie, a group of misfit boys calling themselves the Goonies stumble upon a centuries-old map for pirate's treasure. A developer has nearly foreclosed their families' houses to expand his golf course, so the kids jump at the chance to save their homes. But they soon find out that the caverns containing the treasure are booby-trapped--and they're not the only hunters after the loot.

 

Fans who grew up adoring the lost-treasure quest were rewarded with some buried secrets about "The Goonies" during the weekend celebration. A 30-minute documentary about the cult classic revealed an alternate ending and the fact that Spielberg himself originally filmed a scene involving two escaped gorillas that steal a "red convertible and go tooling around town," according to the film's director, Richard Donner.

 

In that now-lost scene, the primates escape from a circus act when a police officer hears "frantic pounding and agonized screams" from the back of a van. Ripping open the door, the gorillas bowl over the cop and take off in the convertible of the preppy jock character (Steve Antin). Why was such a wild scene cut out? "I don't think the ape suits really worked," Donner admits. Considering the ape suits came from the justifiably forgotten movie "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes," it's easy to see what he's talking about.

 

As for the alternate ending, the housekeeper finds the rubies in Mikey's jacket back in the family's laundry room instead of at Bodega Bay. Originally, the pirate ship remained buried under the rubble instead of magically sailing off into the horizon. (Mikey, by the way, was played by Sean Astin, who went on to greater stardom as Sam Gamgee in the "Lord of the Rings" films. Josh Brolin also made his film debut with "The Goonies.")

 

There's another deleted scene in which the Goonies face off against a rather unconvincing mechanical octopus. How did the kids beat the hungry squid? With the power of '80s music, of course! Data (Jonathan Ke Quon, who also played the boy in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom") shoves his blaring Walkman into the octopus, exclaiming "giant sushi!" Naturally, the octopus swam away as fast as possible.

 

 

In the documentary, Corey Feldman shared that the he actually met longtime friend Corey Haim through "The Goonies." In fact, both auditioned for the role of the lovably obnoxious Mouth. When Haim passed away at 38 this March, "Goonies" co-star Sean Astin called Feldman immediately. "Sean was the first one to call me when Corey Haim died," Feldman said. "We have that true friendship."

 

Haim and Feldman weren't the only ones who tried out for the role of Mouth. Jeff Cohen, the actor who played Chunk in the film, said he wanted the lead role, but the casting directors "said I sound like a Mouth, but I look like a Chunk. So I went back for a second time and learned the new lines." Cohen can't convincingly do the Truffle Shuffle any more, though--the 35-year-old entertainment lawyer has long since lost his baby fat. "Steven [spielberg] said I went from Chunk to Hunk," Cohen told People, "and I defer to his superior judgment."

 

For those who weren't able to make it to Astoria, you can hear the director's and cast's thoughts on the movie when it receives its Blu-ray release this November. But the Ultimate Collector's Edition of the adventure flick may not be the last trip you take to the Goon docks. In the documentary, Donner says a long-rumored sequel to the film is a definite thing and will involve as much of the old cast as possible. "It will happen," he assures fans. "We've been trying for a number of years."

 

And if a sequel isn't enough to satisfy you, you may be able to check out a musical adaptation on Broadway in a few years. "It'll be pure Goonies," Donner says, adding that he would love to see the actors who played the movie's criminal Fratelli brothers involved. "They sing beautifully," he insists. It sounds like Donner really is taking the Goonies mantra "never say die" to heart when it comes to the cult classic.

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/movie-talk...es-reunion.html

Edited by Lycaon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some Chris Nolan news for fanboys to fap to and make baytor's head explodey...

 

HCnolan1.jpg

 

- Nolan considers Robin Williams’ work in Insomnia “flawless.” “I wound up watching the film a hundred times as we cut it, as we nailed it down, and I never hit that point in the performances where you see the acting.”

 

- Discussion turned to similar projects kind of haunting Nolan’s work. When The Prestige came out, The Illusionist was right around the corner. When Insomnia came out, it beat Mark Romanek’s One Hour Photo, another dark Robin Williams performance. And when Memento was being shopped around Scott Franks’ The Lookout was making the rounds as well. That film would later be made starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

 

- Nolan prefers editing to production. “There’s a point during production which you’re really almost doing a paint-by-numbers thing; you’re almost just fulfilling a set of creative obligations that you’ve set up for yourself in prep. So, even though some of it can be fun, and it’s where a lot of interesting and amazing things can happen, there’s a point where you just want to be done with it and get into the edit suite and mess around with what you’ve shot.”

 

- Nolan has one week of finishing touches on Inception.

 

- “I’ve always had a belief that however sophisticated a process of animation is, the audience can always, on some level, tell the difference between something that has been photographed and something that has been animated by an artist.”

 

- Nolan cited an example from Batman Begins where his visual effects crew pushed for more digital work. Nolan pulled off a shot of Bale landing at the bottom of the staircase in Arkham Asylum and told the team to match it. They came back with two videos, one was the CG test and the other the original take. Nolan said they were close, “but I could tell which one was the effect… which upset them a little bit.” But he realized it was close because they had a real shot to match to. When they had to do shots from nothing the level of reality was “far, far lower.”

 

- The trailer shot in Inception with the buildings crumbling into the sea is a combination CG and practical effects shot. They went to Morocco, shot the actors walking up from the water, with the waves coming in and some small representation of buildings to give the CG guys something to start with. So, he always tries to do always do something in camera to give the CG guys something to build on.

 

- Nolan first pitched Inception to Warner Bros right after Insomnia. They liked it, wanted him to write it, but he realized he couldn’t write it on assignment, that he’d have to do it on spec and come back with the finished thing. “So, I went off to write it figuring it would take me a couple of months and it took me ten years!”

 

- Ever since Nolan was a kid he wanted to make a movie about dreams. 10 years ago he settled on the concept of a heist movie set around the idea of a technology that allows people to share dreams.

 

- Nolan was struggling with the script so much because he said he didn’t have a strong emotional connection to the material. “I had written a heist film and heist movies it turns out, and it’s not something I really realized, tend to be deliberately superficial. They tend to be glamorous and fun and procedural based. They tend not to have massive emotional shifts and that wasn’t really enough for me to move forward.” He ultimately did, but that’s why it took so long.

 

- Leonardo DiCaprio had the task of “finding the emotional truth” to the character in the film, much like Guy Pearce did in Memento. Nolan spent months with DiCaprio to find emotional logic for every moment and every decision in the story.

 

- The interrogation scene between Batman and The Joker in The Dark Knight is Nolan’s favorite scene in the movie. He shot screen tests of the Joker make-up and the new Batsuit on that set, which is very much how he wanted it to look.

 

- He tussled with his DP, Wally Pfister, over the lighting of the interrogation room. Nolan didn’t want to do the typical dark and shadowy interrogation scene, so instead he insisted on very hot key lighting (five stops over for you camera nerds).

 

- Said one of the biggest technical challenges of doing that was making the Batsuit look good fully lit. “We could never have done that scene with the Batsuit that we used for Batman Begins. It simply didn’t have the quality for the one we built for The Dark Knight.”

 

- This scene was also put early in the schedule. Nolan talked to Heath about it and felt strongly that by putting one of the big Joker scenes early in the shoot would be a great way of breaking the ice and, hopefully, give him and all of them the confidence that they were going in the right direction with the character. They shot the interrogation scene in the second week.

 

- So, Nolan loves this scene for all those reasons plus it’s the first time we really get to see just how fueled by rage Batman is as a character.

 

- They built that set in a building in London. It was the police station in Batman Begins, went back for The Dark Knight and then shot there again with Inception. “It’s just a good, old building with a lot of texture.”

 

- “Heath was in awe of Gary (Oldman), as all young actors are.”

 

- Nolan’s films have been about haunted figures to a film… so how was he drawn to produce Superman? “As you said, it’s something I’m doing as a producer. Obviously I’m not directing it, but my involvement in it is quite specific. While David Goyer and myself were wrestling with the story for another Batman film as we got stuck he said to me, kind of out of the blue one day, that he had a great idea for how to take on Superman. I thought it was terrific and I just felt like I didn’t want it to not get done, so I went to the studio and said, ‘Let’s have a crack at this.’ That’s the nature of my involvement.”

 

- Speaking of, Richard Donner’s Superman was very influential to Nolan on Batman Begins. “I literally pitched the studio my take on Batman by saying I wanted to make the Batman film that had never been made in 1978 or 1979.” He was attracted to the Dick Donner take of putting an extraordinary hero in an ordinary world.

 

- He told the studio he wanted to shoot just like they did (in an American city for locations and then in English studios), he wanted to cast like they did, build an ensemble. “Now all these superhero movies come out and they have these great casts, but when we did Batman Begins I was looking back at that movie. They had Gene Hackman and Marlon Brando and Glenn Ford and all these incredible actors around the principals. That’s how I got permission from the studio to cast up this comic book movie.”

 

- On Tim Burton’s Batman: “I think what Tim Burton did with Batman was absolutely extraordinary, but it was very idiosyncratic. It’s really kind of a mad studio film, really.”

 

- Nolan is obsessed with Blade Runner. “That’s a film I’ve seen hundreds of times. I’m one of those people that knows every single detail of that movie.” Blade Runner spoke to Nolan at an early age (he saw it when he was 13) and it kind of defined the kind of movie Nolan wanted to make. He loves how it rewards multiple viewings, how you’ll see something new each time you watch it.

 

- Nolan screened Pink Floyd’s The Wall to the cast and crew before they started shooting Inception. He does that a lot, screens movies for the crew and see if that inspires anything for the project they’re working on.

 

- He’s able to use a screening room at Warner Bros. “That’s a good part of being a film director. You can call up a studio and get a film print of a movie!”

 

- Is Michael Caine Nolan’s lucky charm? “He claims to be my lucky charm. The problem I’ve faced, and the reason he’s in Inception, is that once someone has said that to you what are you going to do?” Lots of laughs. “He’s actually just a terrific person to work with. His movie star charisma is just extraordinary. He’s a lovely, professional guy to work with and the crew and the young cast all behave much better when he’s around. He’s very valuable!”

 

- Cillian Murphy gave a killer screen test when he can in to read for the Batman role on Batman Begins. So good, in fact, that when Nolan suggested him for the villain role the studio said okay right away, which he thought was unheard of for a major villain in a Batman movie to be such an unknown (to the masses, obviously) actor.

 

- Chris Nolan doesn’t look at the internet. “I think I realized at a very early stage on Batman Begins that it wouldn’t be helpful to look at what everybody was saying.” Nolan felt like all he could do was deliver the movie he wanted to see and if he tried to accommodate everybody the movie would have been a mess.

 

- And no, Cher is not in the next Batman movie.

 

- He doesn’t have email or cell phone. “It gives me a little more time to think.”

 

- Ed Brubaker asked the first question from the audience. He read a lot of Nolan’s screenplays and complimented them as being some of the tightest screenplays Brubaker has ever read. He wanted to know more about that process.

 

- Nolan wanted to point out that when you’re reading a published screenplay “you’re reading something that’s 14 or 15 drafts in because they publish the shooting draft which includes all the revisions from production.”

 

- Nolan doesn’t have a writing credit on Insomnia, but he wrote the last draft himself.

 

- Nolan’s first drafts very rarely get read (“in fact they very rarely leave my house!”). He called his first drafts “rambling.”

 

- He doesn’t outline and generally starts from page one and tries to write in a linear fashion. Even when the story is non-linear.

 

- Nolan’s first film, Following, was written chronologically and then, at the script stage, he edited it to make it non-linear as he had diagramed it out. He found that very difficult because there was an enormous amount of rewriting to make it flow right together.

 

- When it came to Memento, he thought it was important to write the film the way the audience would see it unfold, instead of doing it like he did Following.

 

- While he doesn’t outline, Nolan does draw a lot of diagrams and sticks stuff all over his walls. “It all gets a bit Beautiful Mind by the end of it.”

 

- “I always start with story rather than characters. When I write I try to write from the point of view of defining a character through action. That way having the narrative shifts define what we think of the characters. That’s why I love film noir crime fiction because double-crosses, twists and turns… you’re constantly readdressing your opinion of the characters and you’re reassessing who you think those people are. I find that a really interesting and very strong form of characterization, but it means putting story first and then just seeing where that leads the characters.”

 

- When it comes to writing dialogue, like the Joker’s multiple origin stories in The Dark Knight, Nolan tends to write it free-form and it can go on for three or four pages. Then he spends days and days editing it down. “I try not to stop an idea before it is born. In this way I throw it all out there and then edit it down. It really is like editing. You write a bunch of dailies and then you edit it together into a comprehensible form.”

 

- Nolan attributes The Dark Knight’s success to people liking Batman Begins. When BB was released the idea of rebooting a franchise was new and they didn’t know exactly how to market it… plus it hadn’t been that long since the previous Batman movies and there was some distrust (read: people thought it could be another shitty Batman movie) from the audience.

 

- He also says Heath Ledger’s performance was also a large factor. He noticed when people started seeing glimpses of his performance they could already tell it was going to be extraordinary.

 

- Christopher Nolan on 3-D: He’s not a huge fan of 3-D (which got a lot of cheers, surprisingly), but said that if people want to watch stereoscopic imaging then there’s no question that’s what the studios are going to make and that’s what he’ll be doing.

 

- He thinks 3-D vs. 2-D is a misnomer. “The whole point of cinematic imagery is that it is three dimensional. We work in three dimensions. 95% of our depth cues come from resolution and color and so forth, so I think the idea of called a movie a 2-D movie a 2-D movie is a little misleading.”

 

- They did post-conversion tests on Inception and “it worked quite well, actually. It looked really good, in fact, but it takes some time and we didn’t have time to do it to the standard I would be happy with.”

 

- “On a technical level I think it’s fascinating. On an experiential level I find the dimness of the image extremely alienating. The truth of it is, when you watch a film you’re looking at 16 foot-lamberts. When you watch it through any of the conventional 3-D processes you get about 3 foot-lamberts. It’s a massive difference.

 

You’re not that aware of it because once you’re in that world your eye compensates, but having struggled for years to get theaters to get up to the proper brightness you’re now sticking polarized filters into this thing and we’re going back worse than we were.”

 

- Also from a shooting standpoint, Nolan has even more issues with 3-D: “It requires shooting on video, if you mask it to 2.40 you’re only getting 800 or 900 lines of resolution. You have to use a beam-splitter.”

 

- Nolan doesn’t use use zoom lenses, only primes, because the image quality isn’t sharp enough on the long end of a zoom, so the idea of shooting a whole film through a beam-splitter doesn’t appeal to him. “There are enormous compromises, in other words.”

 

- Post-conversion 3-D he believes is the only way he’d be able to work with the format, “but it’s really up to the audience to decide what they want to see and how they watch their films.”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
What Hollywood can learn from "Jonah Hex" (Reuters)

Source: Reuters Wed Jun 23, 2010, 10:43 pm EDT

Comments

Buzz up!

 

 

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - When comic books are turned into movies, they can become huge hits, like "Iron Man," or resounding flops, a la "The Spirit."

 

Put "Jonah Hex," which hit theaters Friday, in the latter category. The Warner Bros. release of the DC Comics adaptation about an avenging Civil War veteran barely brought in $5.3 million during the weekend, one of the worst studio showings of the box office summer.

 

So what went wrong? And how should Hollywood proceed as it continues to develop the dozens of comic book and graphic novel adaptations in its pipelines?

 

In several respects, "Hex's" problems can be chalked up to its singular and troubled production history.

 

Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor wrote the initial script for the Warners/Legendary co-production, based on writer John Albano and artist Tony DeZuniga's Western bounty hunter, who first appeared in DC Comics' "All-Star Western #10" in 1972. Five years later, the character earned his own self-titled series, which ran for 92 issues. However, though Hex appeared in other series through the years, he never became a major player in the DC universe.

 

Originally, Neveldine and Taylor also were set to direct, but that idea was cast aside after Josh Brolin came aboard to star. Animator Jimmy Hayward, co-director of "Horton Hears a Who!" took on the directing assignment as his live-action film debut.

 

But after Hayward delivered his cut, Warners decided to move in a different direction and brought in "I Am Legend" helmer Francis Lawrence to oversee reshoots. How extensive those reshoots were remains a subject of debate.

 

In the "Hex" the studio finally released, audiences can see signs of two movies painfully trying to coexist.

 

The dream sequence involving Brolin and bad guy John Malkovich, which pops up at least twice in the film, actually is part of Heyward's original climax. The plot about stealing high-tech cannonballs, along with a glowing ball detonator, were added during Lawrence's reshoots, as were scenes involving Hex's back-story, President Grant (Aidan Quinn) and Hex talking to the dead. (The first cut kept his link to the dead more ambiguous.) Scenes with Michael Shannon and Will Arnett were trimmed to mere seconds.

 

Obvious evidence that the studio and filmmakers weren't on the same page never bodes well at the box office. But there are other cautionary realities involving the movie that filmmakers would be wise to consider in the future when turning comic books into films.

 

- FANBOYS MIGHT NOT MAKE OR BREAK A FILM, BUT THEY NEED TO FEEL RESPECTED.

 

Although many film folks claim to have "comic book cred" -- note how the annual July pilgrimage to Comic-Con has become de rigueur for genre moviemakers -- the various "Hex" hands ultimately showed little regard for the original material and spirit.

 

"Hex" is a Western featuring a scarred bounty hunter. It is not heavy on the supernatural, and it certainly is not some "Wild Wild West" wannabe with lots of high-tech gadgets, guns and explosions.

 

When the filmmakers went beyond the comic character, they created a mish-mash of genres, giving the film the feel of a 1980s comic book movie. Simply put, this "Hex" was not one the fanboys recognized.

 

- PICK A RELEASE DATE CAREFULLY, AND NEVER UNDERESTIMATE PIXAR.

 

As "Hex" was sinking during the weekend, Disney opened Pixar's latest, "Toy Story 3," to $110 million. Warners might have thought it could succeed with a bit of counterprogramming, putting the young-male-angled pic against a family brand. But the domestic bow of "Toy 3" shows that nearly everybody, including "Hex's" target audience, opted to see the further adventures of Woody and Buzz.

 

- NOT EVERY COMIC NEEDS TO BE MOVIE.

 

The movie version of "Hex" should have been rated R, made like a relatively cheap spaghetti Western instead of a PG-13 exercise with a budget said to have climbed to $50 million-$60 million, including reshoots.

 

If Warners didn't want to commit to a more down-and-dirty version, it shouldn't have made the movie. In fact, what "Hex" should have been, and still could be, is a limited TV series on HBO, FX or TNT. It would have been about a bounty hunter who is barely better than the men he hunts but who occasionally shows a spark of humanity.

 

- EXECUTIVES WOULD BE WISE TO NOT OVERREACT AND THINK NONMARQUEE COMIC BOOK TITLES CAN'T BE WORTHY OF ADAPTATIONS.

 

With April releases of the DC Vertigo comic "The Losers" tanking and "Kick-Ass" underperforming, some executives might be inclined to throw up their hands and decide that only such A-list superheroes as Green Lantern and Captain America are worthy of big-screen treatment.

 

But that would be a misreading of the tea leaves. Don't forget, it wasn't that long ago that skeptics scoffed at Marvel for making the first "Iron Man," and though based on less-well-known graphic novels, "A History of Violence," "Ghost World" and "Road to Perdition" found favor with critics. In fact, DC deserves praise for attempting to tackle the rich depths of noncaped characters.

 

Some comic titles might need more nurturing, and as with any other source material, need to be made with an eye on the budget.

 

If a movie based on a best-selling book bombs, no one says, "No more movies based on books!" But Hollywood often displays a different mentality when it comes to comics, regarding them like the little brother you grudgingly let play baseball with you and your friends.

http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.reuter...nah-hex-reuters

 

Didn't we have a Jonah Hex movie thread?

Edited by Lycaon
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...