Comic-con has become one the best ways of marketing a film in the recent past, and this year is no surprise. With mouth-watering news of new epic adventures, new superhero tales, and new zany comedies, comic-con always turns some heads with both expected and unexpected revelations.
To begin with, Zack Snyder (300) has confirmed that he has begun writing an off-shoot of the Gerard Butler starrer based off of Frank Miller's Xerxes. If the film remains true to Miller's graphic novel (as it is expected to), you can expect to see a story about the battle of Artemisium between the Persians and Athenians. According to history, this battle occurred simultaneously with the battle at Thermopylae as part of a greater unified effort of Greece as a whole to parry the Persian attack force. While this film will probably not keep the nuances of history in tact, it will still be a wonderfully escapist and epic film like its predecessor. Release date is still far out of the question as the script has yet to be picked up by any studios (or completed as a matter of fact...)
Sam Raimi is also gearing up for new exploits following his completion of the Spiderman series. Apart from an Oz prequel titled The Great and Powerful and a Warcraft movie, Raimi is starting work on an adaptation of the infamous OK Corral shootout of the early 1900s. The twist, though, is that the shootout is set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Entitled Earp: Saints for Sinners, this film has a lot of potential to confuse and/or entertain.
Brad Pitt's Plan B studios are also busy preparing an adaptation to the Max Brooks novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Max Brooks is indeed the son of Mel Brooks, and his novel has gained much praise and attention from a wide array of fans and appreciators. While another zombie movie was not at the top of my list, this one may prove to be quite the delightfully brainy film (pun intended)...
Mark Wahlberg is set to begin working on an expanded version of the six minute short film The Raven. For those of you who haven't seen the film, it is about Chris Black, aka The Raven, who is a telepathic fugitive on the run in a futuristic alternative Los Angeles controlled by an oppressive regime. Wahlberg plans to make a feature length film of the same name, and Universal has picked up the Justin Marks script. The short film's original director, Ricardo de Montreuil will also be directing this as his English debut.
Sadly, even criminals become celebrities in our messed up world. 20th Century Fox has started searching for a writer and a director to start working on a chronicle of the life of Colton Harris-Moore, better known as The Barefoot Bandit. Yes, he was just captured about a week ago, and he's already getting what I like to call "the Hollywood treatment." I hope this film fails worse than Shyamalan's horror film - The Last Airbender...
Another sad thing occurred recently as well. Michael Bay's production company The Institute began its work on its first feature film - Hansel and Gretel 3D. There it all goes... The chilling Grimm tale of a cannibalistic woman trapping innocent children with tempting lures will be turned into a world of explosions caused by candy-bombs, endless amounts of Gretel's scantily clad body, and monsters much too out of place for anything involved in the original Grimm tales. And, on top of all that, Bay jumps onto the 3D bandwagon, which I am personally quite over already. *sigh*
Well, there you have it. The list of film news revealed at Comic-con that caught my eye. I don't know about you, but I can feel the excitement rushing through my veins.
To begin with, Zack Snyder (300) has confirmed that he has begun writing an off-shoot of the Gerard Butler starrer based off of Frank Miller's Xerxes. If the film remains true to Miller's graphic novel (as it is expected to), you can expect to see a story about the battle of Artemisium between the Persians and Athenians. According to history, this battle occurred simultaneously with the battle at Thermopylae as part of a greater unified effort of Greece as a whole to parry the Persian attack force. While this film will probably not keep the nuances of history in tact, it will still be a wonderfully escapist and epic film like its predecessor. Release date is still far out of the question as the script has yet to be picked up by any studios (or completed as a matter of fact...)
Sam Raimi is also gearing up for new exploits following his completion of the Spiderman series. Apart from an Oz prequel titled The Great and Powerful and a Warcraft movie, Raimi is starting work on an adaptation of the infamous OK Corral shootout of the early 1900s. The twist, though, is that the shootout is set in a post-apocalyptic Las Vegas. Entitled Earp: Saints for Sinners, this film has a lot of potential to confuse and/or entertain.
Brad Pitt's Plan B studios are also busy preparing an adaptation to the Max Brooks novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Max Brooks is indeed the son of Mel Brooks, and his novel has gained much praise and attention from a wide array of fans and appreciators. While another zombie movie was not at the top of my list, this one may prove to be quite the delightfully brainy film (pun intended)...
Mark Wahlberg is set to begin working on an expanded version of the six minute short film The Raven. For those of you who haven't seen the film, it is about Chris Black, aka The Raven, who is a telepathic fugitive on the run in a futuristic alternative Los Angeles controlled by an oppressive regime. Wahlberg plans to make a feature length film of the same name, and Universal has picked up the Justin Marks script. The short film's original director, Ricardo de Montreuil will also be directing this as his English debut.
Sadly, even criminals become celebrities in our messed up world. 20th Century Fox has started searching for a writer and a director to start working on a chronicle of the life of Colton Harris-Moore, better known as The Barefoot Bandit. Yes, he was just captured about a week ago, and he's already getting what I like to call "the Hollywood treatment." I hope this film fails worse than Shyamalan's horror film - The Last Airbender...
Another sad thing occurred recently as well. Michael Bay's production company The Institute began its work on its first feature film - Hansel and Gretel 3D. There it all goes... The chilling Grimm tale of a cannibalistic woman trapping innocent children with tempting lures will be turned into a world of explosions caused by candy-bombs, endless amounts of Gretel's scantily clad body, and monsters much too out of place for anything involved in the original Grimm tales. And, on top of all that, Bay jumps onto the 3D bandwagon, which I am personally quite over already. *sigh*
Well, there you have it. The list of film news revealed at Comic-con that caught my eye. I don't know about you, but I can feel the excitement rushing through my veins.