Even though Spider-Man is finally swinging into theaters everywhere, we just know your craving for cinematic super-heroic adventure still isn’t satisfied. You won’t have to wait long for your next fix, though, as some of the world’s greatest superheroes are already working on hitting their marks and rehearsing their dialogue on soundstages throughout Hollywood and beyond.
The Marvel Universe goes to the multiple
Marvel Comics, home of the wall-crawler himself, has the lead in getting their trademark characters–who are typically as angst-ridden as they are muscle-bound–to the big screen. The charge is led by executive producers Avi Arad (the former head of action-figure maker Toy Biz, which now owns the legendary comics label) and Stan Lee (the co-creator of Spidey, the Hulk and other Marvel headliners), who’ve doing lunch all over Tinseltown to make a deal for their spandex-clad clients. (Blade 2, another Marvel property recently sunk its fangs into big box office.)
More mutant madness will hit the big screen in 2003 with the release of X2, the sequel to 2000’s smash hit X-Men. Hugh Jackman will again be slicing and dicing with his adamantium claws as the feral-yet-noble Wolverine, and Oscar-winning Halle Berry will also re-create her tempest in a c-cup as the sexy, weather-controlling Storm. Back on board are Patrick Stewart (Professor X), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), James Marsden (Cyclops) and Anna Paquin (Rogue), contending once again with the malevolent Magneto (Ian McKellan) and his band of evil mutants, including Mystique (Rebecca Romjin-Stamos) and Sabertooth (Tyler Mane).
Director Bryan Singer returns to introduce new members of the X-team, rumored to be comics stalwarts Nightcrawler and the Angel, along with an unrevealed mutant, rumored to be a teenage girl–Shadowcat? Jubilee? God forbid, the Dazzler?. Shooting on the New Line film is set to commence in Canada in June.
Marvel’s heaviest hitter will also be unleashed in 2003, when Universal Studios releases The Hulk, a big-budget summer feature featuring the less-than-jolly green giant–and no, Lou Ferrigno won’t be slapping emerald paint on his pecs for this one. Director Ang Lee has opted for a virtual Hulk this time, a CGI-creation designed to unleash a maximum amount of devastation on his environment.
On the flesh-and-blood side, the fortuitously named Eric Bana will be playing Dr. Bruce Banner, the more passive side of the gamma-rayed giant’s Jekyll-and-Hyde equation. Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly will be the beauty to the Hulk’s beast as love interest Betty Ross, while Sam Elliott plays her father, the Hulk’s nemesis Gen. “Thunderbolt” Ross. Nick Nolte, Josh Lucas and Brooke Langton round out the cast.
The dashing Daredevil, a blind lawyer gifted with heightened senses after (you guessed it) a radioactive mishap, is already in production under director Mark Steven Johnson (Simon Birch), with Ben Affleck taking up the athletic mantle of ol’ Hornhead. Jennifer Garner adds to her butt-kicking resume as the exotic assassin Elektra, caught in between her ex-lover Daredevil and his foes, the mammoth crime lord the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan) and fellow hit-man Bullseye (Colin Farrell).
Jon Favreau plays DD’s hapless attorney partner Foggy Nelson, Joe Pantoliano is reporter Ben Urich, Ellen Pompeo is secretary Karen Page, David Keith plays DD’s boxer father and filmmaker Kevin Smith, who has written the crime-fighter’s comic book adventures, cameos as a lab assistant.
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The Fantastic Four, the cosmic-ray powered quartet who launched the new era of Marvel Comics in the 1960s, are also expected to carry their own film, written by Chris Columbus and directed by Peyton Reed (Bring It On), but no casting or shoot date has been announced. However, the FF’s sometimes-enemy, sometimes-ally, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, is also getting the big-screen treatment at Universal in an undersea adventure to be penned by screenwriter David Self (The Bourne Identity).
Marvel hopes you’ll forget–please, please forget–the lame, late 1980s Dolph Lundgren film, as it teams with Artisan Films and writer-director Jonathan Hensleigh to revive The Punisher. As you no doubt know, the Punisher is the gun-toting superhero vigilante with no compunction against killing, who bedeviled both Spider-Man and Daredevil before becoming a comic book sensation as a solo act. Artisan has also optioned Captain America and Thor, among others.
Dimension Films is developing Ghost Rider, the supernatural motorcyclist with the flaming skull, as a vehicle for Nicolas Cage, a fan of both big bikes and old comic books. Iron Fist, Man-Thing, Dr. Strange, Werewolf by Night and Deathlock are among the remaining Marvel properties with possible cinematic life ahead of them.
Meanwhile, as they say in the comic panels, fans can also expect a Blade 3 with Wesley Snipes and Columbia Pictures has already given the go-ahead to a Spider-Man sequel, with Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst and director Sam Raimi signed to return.
Look, up on the screen…
Over at DC Comics (or as Stan Lee used to say, the “Distinguished Competition,”) plans have the veteran comic book publisher breathlessly awaiting a re-launch of their most enduring and icon character. While Smallville, the small-screen adventures of a pre-super Clark Kent, continues to garner ratings and pop cultural allusions to the Man Steel continue to abound in unusual places like Five For Fighting lyrics, Superman promises to be a big-budget return to greatness, red cape and all, in which–through modern special effects–we’ll really, really believe a man can fly.
Warner Brothers has apparently scrapped plans for a possible Superman vs. Batman film by director Wolfgang Petersen, called World’s Finest, in favor of a full-blown revival of the Superman franchise (with no relation to Superman Lives/Superman Reborn, the aborted Kevin Smith–Tim Burton–Nicolas Cage project of the late 1990s).
This time around, kicky, kitschy director McG (Charlie’s Angels) has agreed to helm a major movie penned by Alias creator J.J. Abrams and produced by Jon Peters, part of the team that brought the original Batman film to the screen. Still in the earliest stages of development, no casting has been done as yet.
Speaking of the Caped Crusader, Warner Brothers hasn’t forgotten the super-successful Batman franchise, even after the debacle of 1997’s misbegotten Batman & Robin. The studio has announced a variety of pending Bat-projects, with the leading candidate being a big-screen adaptation of comics great Frank Miller‘s seminal 1987 work Batman: Year One, with Miller himself penning a script to be directed by Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream).
In an unusual move, Warner also almost simultaneously announced plans to bring the WB animated series Batman Beyond (featuring a rookie, teenage Batman in the future mentored by an aged Bruce Wayne) to live-action, directed by Boaz Yakin (Remember the Titans) and written by ani series creators Paul Dini and Alan Burnett. That film is currently on hold.
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But while Batman’s return trip to the silver screen is delayed, the felonious feline foe Catwoman may be scratching her way to the top of the fast track for a solo project. Last year actress Ashley Judd agreed to tackle the part (as a different-but-linked character from Michelle Pfeiffer‘s kittenish villain in Batman Returns) and French filmmaker Pitof (Alien Resurrection) is said to be in negotiations to direct.
“I’m extremely possessive of that part now,” Judd was recently quoted as saying. “I’m just like a dog hiking my leg all around that script. I’m like, ‘You people back off. It’s mine!'”
Wonder Woman is another DC femme fatale who may yet make it to the screen, with Sandra Bullock most frequently mentioned to play the Amazing Amazon.
Constantine–an adaptation of DC’s edgy and dark Vertigo imprint series Hellblazer, featuring John Constantine (a character created by Alan Moore, whose mini-series inspired last year’s From Hell)–was to start production with Nicolas Cage headlining. A legal imbroglio, however, recently broke out between Warner Brothers and now ex-director Tarsem Singh and stalled production.
Also on the comics rack
Blade director Steve Norrington has greed to bring Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen–a Victorian era adventure uniting famous characters from literature of the time–to life for 20th Century Fox.
Sean Connery has been tapped to play Allan Quartermain (a pre-Indian Jones adventurer), while other casting–including Dr. Henry Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, the Invisible Man, Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer, Captain Nemo and Dracula’s Mina Harker Murray–is yet to be completed. The screenplay is by another comic veteran, James Robinson, who wrote the much praised Starman series for DC.
And fresh off the success of Blade 2, director Guillermo del Toro will realize his long-cherished dream to film Dark Horse Comics’ Hellboy–the huge, red, horned paranormal adventurer who might also be a demon–for Revolution Studios. Series creator Mike Mignola (who did character design for Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire) is deeply involved in the project. Actor Ron Perlman has been cast as the lead, while prosthetics legend Rick Baker is being approached to do makeup effects.
