I’m not a follower of Ain’t It Cool News, since (a) so much of it is wrong, and (b) so much of it is so! breathlessly! WRITTEN!
So I hadn’t heard of a lot of these comics-related movie (and TV) marvels coming up, as reported in this week’s Comics Buyer’s Guide.
Good News
- Hellboy comes out in 4/04. The trailer looks pretty good, and Mignola co-wrote. Here’s hoping.
- Spider-Man II shows up 7/04. The first one was pretty damn good, and pretty much the whole team is back. Doc Ock should provide some good opposition.
- Blade: Trinity in 8/04. The third and final outing. I missed Blade 2, but the buzz wasn’t bad. And with Hannibal King showing up, it can’t be too terrible, right? Right?
- The Incredibles comes out 12/04. If you caught the trailer during Finding Nemo, you know what I’m talking about. Pixar does supers. Hoo-yah!
- Gen-13, the animated feature has been released in Europe, oddly enough, but will only come to the US on DVD next year.
- Preacher. Preacher? Preacher! Garth Ennis did the screenplay, and James Marsden plays Jesse. Here’s hoping …
- Mirror Mask is from Henson productoins, written by Neil Gaiman, and produced by Dave McKean. Yeah, I have a good feeling about this one.
Ho-Hum News
- Garfield as Ice Age-style CGI apears in 6/04. Is Garfield still funny? Was it funny after the first six months? Got me.
- Catwoman in 7/04. Strike 1: Halle Berry. Strike 2: Not that Catwoman. Strike 3: Halle Berry.
- Man-Thing in 8/04. Be scared. Can a movie with that title actually ever be good? It seems doubtful, and the concept doesn’t strike me as one that has legs, so to speak.
- Lady Death appears in a straight-to-DVD anime. I’m not sanguine about the character to begin with, and I can only imagine what the animated version will be like.
- Asterix & Obelix will have two US releases of previous European animated features. Fabulously successful over there, I have no interest in them over here.
- The Crow: Wicked Prayer raises the question: whatever would we do without another Crow movie. The cast (Eddie Furlong, David Boreanez, Tara Reid, Dennis Hopper) is promising, and the trailer is getting good buzz, but the Crow is so 80s …
- Son of the Mask. Pardon me if I yawn. Much.
Unknown News
- The Punisher returns again 4/04. Stills have looked good, word on the street’s been bad. It has Travolta as the main heavy — but, then, so did Battlefield: Earth.
- Constantine (Hellblazer) shows up 9/04. Good news: It’s John Constantine! Bad news: It’s Keanu Reaves playing the grifter mage. Irksome news: It’s all Americanized. I have hopes, but …
- Fantastic Four may show up in 12/04, or may fall back to 2005. It’s got a good pedigree, and some X-Files ties through Mark Frost’s screenplay, and so much history backing it up — but I worry.
- A Thousand Days will be a 2004 SciFi Channel adaptation of the Strikeforce: Morituri concept. This would make a great TV series; as anything short, the idea of humans turned into supers to fight off an alien invasion — a process that will kill them in only a thousand days — seems equally limited.
- Alien Legion seems a natural for CGI treatment. That said — will it be any good?
- Blueberry is a Moebius-designed dark Western. It will certainly be interesting, but will it be entertaining?
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I’ll go see Spider-Man and maybe Fantastic Four. That’s it.
Mark Frost? Are you thinking Mark Snow, who did the music for the X-Files? I don’t know who Frost is…
The article credits him as “co-creator” of The X-Files.
Or not. IMDB doesn’t show him in that role, but does note
he’s a “co-creator” and writer of much Twin Peaks.
AICN actually isn’t mostly wrong, they’ve been mostly right (i’m not reffering to opinions) sometimes they’re just right way to far in advance and it gets forgotten about. There have been some retractions the past year but i can count them on both hands.
-Speaker
Hm.
The last news I had on the FF film sounded intriguing. They were to be media celebrities, with crowds chasing them all over the place, which works for me. Unlike the X-Men or Avengers, you had that sort of vibe with the team. Being mostly family helped, too.
It’s certainly a take on the characters that hasn’t been explored in film with other comic book types. Sounds interesting. And being so open (no masks, family types), it does fit.