Fox Guru Mark Millar Justice League Movie Quip: ‘Excellent Way to Lose 200 Million Dollars’
Mark Millar isn’t one to keep his mouth shut about Mark Millar‘s thoughts and opinions about Mark Millar‘s own work and Mark Millar‘s thoughts and opinions about the work of others. (Sorry for all the Mark Millar‘s there, but for some reason, when ever I read something Mark Millar has said, I always imagine him talking in the third person, like the Queen of England’s royal manner of speaking.
While he’s been busy getting all of Fox Studios Comic book franchise characters, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four to name a couple, in a row, Millar still had time to dissect what he thinks are Warner Brothers and DC Comics biggest problems in bringing the Justice League to the big screen.
Talking with SciFi Now, Millar started with a look at the groups powers and why the Justice League will have issues translating those powers and character traits to theater screens:
“Now the stuff I grew up with… I adored the DC stuff growing up but really, how do you do a movie about Green Lantern? His power is that he manifests green plasma from his imagination and uses them as weapons against someone? Even that in itself if you just imagine then watching a fight scene with a guy who’s like a hundred feet away making plasma manifestations fight someone – it’s not exactly raucous, getting up close and personal.
The Flash has door handles on the side of his mask and if he doesn’t wear that mask, I’ll be pissed off, you know what I mean? They’re in a weird, weird situation – if you’ve got a guy who moves at the speed of light up against the Weather Wizard and Captain Cold or whatever, then your movie’s over in two seconds. You can get away with stuff in comics that in live action’s just a bit sucky – the best one is definitely Aquaman. Aquaman can’t even talk under water. If you think about it in comics it’s fine, you just have a speech balloon, but how do you have Atlantis and people talking under water? Are they gonna talking telepathically? Is it going to be body forms?”
The core issues that Millar contends will bury the big budget DC Comics team up is:
“I actually think the big problem for them is the characters are just too out of date. The characters were created 75 years ago, even the newest major character was created 68 years ago, so they’re in a really weird time…
The actual logistics of each member of the Justice League is disastrous, and you put them all together and I think you get an excellent way of losing $200 million.”
Are you buying what The Millar is cooking, or is this just a smoke screen, an effort to muddy the waters just enough to make Warner Brothers Executives hesitant to swing for the fences with a Justice League Movie?
Are Millar’s points valid? I don’t agree that the powers of the Justice League won’t translate well on screen, but I do agree that the cost of getting those powers onto the big screen are expensive and time consuming. What is all boils down to for this NerdBastard is, will the story and characterizations work, or will we get 5 different characters with 5 different movie styles crammed into one two hour monstrosity?
Remember these gems from the past?
Via SciFi Now
Updated! CW Reveals What Kind of Wonder Woman They Want for ‘Amazon’
With Arrow a sure-fire hit for the CW, it seems that the network is looking to its next superhero crossover hit, a new take on Wonder Woman called Amazon. Not letting themselves be deterred by David E. Kelly‘s recent attempt to make a Wonder Woman show, it seems that the project, this time being overseen by TV writer (Grey’s Anatomy, The OC) and comic book author (Young Avengers, Wonder Woman) Allan Heinberg, is ready and waiting at the casting phase, but with a twist….
Yes friends, they are looking for a young woman to play an Amazonian princess set loose on our mortal world, and yes, they want her to be a tall girl (5’8 according to the casting notice), and her name is Iris. Wait, did I just type “Iris”? Let’s go the rest of the casting notice:
She comes from a remote, secluded country and until now has spent most of her life as a soldier and a leader on the battlefield. Because of relentless brutality of her life at home, Iris looks at our world with absolute awe and astonishment. She’s delighted and just as often horrified by the aspects of everyday life that we take for granted: skyscrapers, traffic, ice cream. It’s all new and fascinating and sometimes slightly troubling to her. Iris is completely unschooled in our world, our culture, our customs. And she’s completely inexperienced at interpersonal relationships. She has no social filter, does not suffer fools, and tends to do and say exactly what’s on her mind at all times. She’s bluntly, refreshingly honest. She can tell when you’re lying to her. And she doesn’t have time or patience for politics or tact because she’s too busy trying to experience everything our world has to offer. There are too many sights to see and things to learn and people to care for. Hers is a true, noble, and generous heart. And she will fight and die for the people she loves. Iris is a fierce warrior with the innocent heart of a romantic and she will fight to the death to make the world safe for innocents and true romantics everywhere.
So is this another Warner Bros bungle? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Maybe they’re fudging the casting notice to that people don’t get hooked on the past failure of the previous Wonder Woman pilot, or maybe they’re saving the Diana Prince Wonder Woman for the big screen while having a Wonder Woman named Iris for TV. Either way, if Arrow is any indication there maybe reason to hope that this time TV might get Wonder Woman right.
What do you Bastards think? Do you have high hopes for the new Wonder Woman? Any hopes for that matter.
Source: Deadline (via Coming Soon)
UPDATE! Geoff Johns has since tweeted, clearing up any concern or worry about Wonder Woman being a woman named Iris,
If a WW show happens her name is of course DIANA. Codenames (like IRIS) are used in casting a lot to try and avoid speculation. #TV101
- Geoff Johns (@geoffjohns) November 30, 2012
Whew! Thank, Hera!
Source: DC Women Kicking Ass
WB’s ‘Superman’ Copyright Win Gives Justice League Movie The Green Light
Wednesday afternoon Warner Bros. scored a major victory in the long running legal battle over the ownership of the Man of Steel. U.S. District Judge Otis Wright shot down the heirs of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster in their attempt to reclaim 50% of the rights to the Last Son of Krypton. The reasoning behind this that back in 1992 Shuster’s sister, Jean Peavy, struck a deal with DC Comics in 1992 covering her late brother’s debts (plus paying her $25,000 a year for the rest of her life). A deal that then DC VP Paul Levitz warned would ‘fully resolve any past, present or future claims against DC’ by the Shuster estate. Case closed.
Had the ruling gone the other way, WB and its DC Comics subsidiary would have lost the right to use key elements to the of the characters mythos, severely hampering any future projects. As it stands there is still the other creators estate to contend with, Jerry Siegel‘s heirs can still terminate half of Warner’s Superman copyright in 2013. This will be appealed on the 5th of Novemeber by the studio.
So what does this mean? WB/DC now firmly hold half of Superman and under copyright law can use the character however they see fit (just so long as they keep paying Siegel’s estate half of the profits.)
Wow, comic book law is exciting stuff, huh?
Without dropping into the abyss of the creator rights debate once more, let’s focus on the good things here. This now means the studio is free(er) to move ahead with little risk on projects like next summers Man of Steel and more importantly the long stalled Justice League movie.
Yes, that’s right. Justice League. Just one day after the ruling The LA Times is reporting that filming will begin next year and the DC Comics super team will hit the big screen in the summer of 2015. Apparently they have a script, written by Will Beall, ready to roll and are just looking to attach a director and cast the lead roles.
One word of caution, the source that the LA Times cites is described as ‘a knowledgeable person not authorized to discuss the matter publicly‘ – so if you had ‘Summer 2015′ in your Justice League release date office betting pool hold off on collecting your money till we get the official word.
You guys have a Justice League release date office betting pool too, right?
Source: LA Times, 1, title image via daniel-morpheus.deviantart.com
Wonder Woman Returns To TV In ‘Amazon’?
And luckily David E. Kelley has nothing to do with it this time. A little less than a year after NBC buried Kelly’s terrible Wonder Woman pilot comes word from Vulture that CW is looking to add the Amazonian princess to its roster of superhero based TV shows. Reportedly being developed by Allan Heinberg (Grey’s Anatomy, The O.C. with some comic book cred as creator of Marvel Comics Young Avengers) under the working title of Amazon, it apparently will be more ‘Wonder Woman Begins’ than any of the previous small screen outings for the character.
“It will focus on Wonder Woman as a young, budding superhero, rather than a fully formed defender of liberty. (Think Smallville, but instead of a ‘no tights, no flights’ rule, this show might have a ‘”no bracelets, no crown’ mandate.)”
I guess that is an ok plan. Actually, scratch that, it is a terrible plan. While Smallville had its fans, it always seemed stupid to me that they dragged the cape hate to long, not to mention all that ‘The Blur’ silliness. Why can’t they just have a superhero suit up like they are suppose to, He’s GREEN Arrow, damn it. GREEN!
…but I digress.
As Vulture points out, the CW is just developing a script. No pilot has been ordered and its far to early to speculate that one even would be. The question is though, how does this affect Warner Bros. plans to bring WW to the big screen or the characters involvement in the apparently still happening Justice League movie?
Source: IGN
