| MG NEWS ( UPDATED 6-04) NEWS? WRITE US AT midnightgraffiti@aol.com
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, DEPT. Part I
Though there are many fun popcorn movies to look forward to this summer (see sidebar), we're not sure about Catwoman, judging from the trailers. Honestly. That S&M outfit on Hale Berry may be a comic geek's wet dream, but if she was skulking around our neighborhood in that outfit, we wouldn't be able to stop laughing. Do those little leather straps deflect bullets? Can she run in high heels? Does she get hat hair when she takes off her mask? Is her bare midriff suppossed to inspire fear or is lust her secret weapon? Don't worry about her catching cold, though. We're betting there's a long black leather coat in her closet somewhere, the one article of clothing derigueur for summer movies.(see Hellboy, below,)
TROUBLE IN PARADISE? What's up with Indiana Jones IV? Soon after a recent announcement that Frank Darabont had turned in a script that pleased principals Harrison Ford and Director Steven Spielberg, apparently co-producer George Lucas played the spoiler and the project has settled back into limbo. (Read: back for a rewrite. ) We're not the first to observe that Lucas, bless his heart, is not necessarily the greatest storyteller outside of his Star Wars milieu. Spielberg and Darabont have proven their versatility and depth as storytellers. Can they both be wrong? Delaying the fourth installment can only accomplish one thing --a slow death for the project.
BLADE THREE? COULD WE HAVE JUST ONE SANDMAN INSTEAD?
Blade III 's David Goyer intends to move forward with writer Neil Gaiman's Murder Mysteries as his next project. First published in the Midnight Graffiti anthology (Warner Books), Murder Mysteries was sold to Miramax with Alessandro Camon attached as producer and Goyer as writer/director. Though the property was optioned nearly four years ago, the production has been stalled due to Goyer's committments to the Blade franchise and writing chores on the upcoming Batman Begins, slated for 2005. We admire his taste in Gaiman's material, and hope for the best as he leaves his comic book roots behind for this ambitious and demanding project.
In other Gaiman news, Neil is being courted by most major studios and is currently being tapped for projects with a number of A-list directors and screenwriters, including Terry Gilliam and Robert Zemekis. Properties including Chivalry, Death and the High Cost of Living, Good Omens, and Neverwhere are in various states of development. It's a crime that these exceptional and imaginative works are in the hands of timid and apparently moribund executives. C'mon folks--surely there's room on the slate (somewhere between the Olsen twins and the Wayan Brothers) for something worth watching? If you're a fan (and we are, unabashedly) visit neilgaiman.com to get the latest.
SPAWN OF SPAWN
Film Roman, the folks who bring you The Simpsons every week, have cut a deal with Spawn creator Todd McFarlane. No word yet on the nature of the deal. McFarlane came to fame as the writer who revived a stale Spiderman back in the late eighties and revitalized the fandom of the now mega- franchise. Todd spun himself off into a mini-enterprise with toys and comics, principally Spawn. The best-selling comic was adapted as both an animated series and feature film. McFarlane recently lost a lawsuit with MG alumni Neil Gaiman over the rights to Miracle Man (exhaustively covered elsewhere on the web by Comics Weekly and others), though we hope both parties had the best of motives for their vituperative head-butting. For you sports fans, McFarlane was the party who paid close to $3 million for home run hitter Mark McGwire's 70th homer. Incidentally, McFarlane Toys is the 5th largest action figure manufacturer in the US, producing Spawn and KISS action figures along with figures based on characters such as Ozzy Osbourne, Austin Powers, The Crow, Species II, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, Chucky, Psycho and Pumpkinhead. So--what kind of childhood would that imply?
WHAT WERE THEY THINKING, DEPT. Part II: HELL,BOY
As long as we're on this comic jag, we learned that director Guillermo Del Toro (Mimic, Blade 2) had a fight on his hands with the promotional poster for Hellboy, released this spring. Mike Mignola's creation has long been a cult favorite in comicland and the film had an impressive opening weekend. No doubt Hellboy will make back the nut and then some for Sony Pictures (Hellboy 2 is already in the works). Guillermo wanted an illustration for the poster image, not a photo composite, sensing that a) a painting would make a great transition from the source material (comic) to film, and b) it would distinguish his film from the derivative posters used for most modern releases.
Guillermo went to the best artist in the industry (Drew Struzan, about whom you will be learning much this fall) and commissioned him for the poster. How could Sony object? Guillermo knew that Drew, who created posters for every mega-hit on the planet (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Bladerunner, E.T., Harry Potter--the list is endless and mind-boggling) would be the ideal interpreter for the elements of the film. Del Toro trusted that Struzan would interpret the gun-wielding half demon in a creative, compelling way. Del Toro naturally feared what studio marketers typically do with such subject matter: morph his unique character into some gun-toting, black raincoat-wearing, steroid-popping, triple-X type he-man who happened to have the remnant of horns on his head.
Del Toro had to put a frickin' headlock on Sony's marketing department to let the poster happen and even then, they only printed and distributed the minumum number to keep the director happy. At Guillermo's insistence, the commissioned poster ran the week of the opening. The film opened at number one. However, the second week of release, Sony published their own version of the poster ad featuring star Ron Perlman as -- you guessed it -- a gun toting heavy in a black raincoat, a huge firearm at his side, with the barest suggestion of a bump on his head. (See below.) The film dropped 68% the second week -- way more than the usual drop for a number one film.
ART by DREW STRUZAN ART by SOME GUY
Think about it. Sony buys this property from Mignola, gets him to collaborate on the screenplay, hires Del Toro -- an expert in the genre -- to polish it and direct it. Sony does everything in their power at conventions and through the media to seduce and solicit the approbation of the jillions of Hellboy's fans, then--in a stunning master stroke of anti-promotion--they deliberately DISGUISE the character in the poster ads so the casual viewer won't suspect any of Hellboy's unique qualities. The image is so homogenized that it could be a poster for , well... anything with a big guy and a gun. Look at that thing on the right--is that, like, an ad for Underworld, or Van Helsing or The Punisher or the latest Vin Diesel movie? Flipping through the paper, what's different about Hellboy, the movie, you should part with twenty bucks? It does remind us that the Matrix is on TV and we can stay home and watch it for free. Way to go Sony!
Do yourself a favor--take a good look at the Drew Struzan poster, and the rest of his vast porfolio, at drewstruzan.com .
MORE NEWS SOON!
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BOX OFFICE
What could be more fun this summer than the line up of films? Kicking off with monster sequel Shrek II, Memorial Day weekend blasted off with The Day After Tomorrow, another world-ending holocaust film from Roland Emmerich. This is one of our favorite genres.Who can forget Independence Day or Deep Impact? The Day the Earth Stood Still, or The Day After? Then there's great end-of-the-world fiction: Stephen King's The Stand, Niven and Pournelle's Lucifer's Hammer, and the recent best-seller, Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks. We'll even watch Volcano or Outbreak in a pinch, though the latter is a psychotic mess of a film. 28 Days Later is our current favorite. In the next few weeks we can relish Harry Potter III, Spiderman II, I,Robot, Alexander, and later in the summer, we're praying they haven't botched the long-in-the-making Alien vs. Predator.
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