|
Enda80
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
108 Posts |
 Posted - 03/10/2009 : 5:36:41 PM
|
http://Jabootu.net/?p=2011
A historical sidenote regarding the plethora of Marvel project in the works. New World Pictures owned Marvel for a while, and had similarly ambitious plans to do a slate of Marvel adaptations. Lee Goldberg mentions this in an article in Comics Scene#46.
Adaptations in the works included Ant-Man, Cloak and Dagger (?), Warriors Three, Elektra: Assassin, Hero For Hire, Marada the She-Wolf, and Blade.
Goldberg discussed how he was involved with two attempts to make a film or TV version of Blade the vampire hunter, one with New World that went so far as a dinner meeting with Richard Roundtree to discuss his playing Blade (they both suffered food poisoning). The project, one of many pursued by New World (including Elektra, Warriors Three, and Hero For Hire), went nowhere due to his associate Tony Randel getting to direct Hellbound:Hellraiser II and leaving New World to continue directing. The script included Blade as sort of a dhampir (Goldberg admits the influence of Hannibal King) who would live off of blood stolen from the Red Cross or from wild beasts. Blade would find a town in the Rust Belt that had made a pact with a group of vampires: the infirm would be the livestock for the vampires, everyone else left alone. Blade plays the two humans and vampires against each other in a Red Harvest/Yojimbo style fashion. Later, when the syndicated show She-Wolf of London was on the air, a companion tv series starring Blade as a travelling vampire hunter was developed as a concept. It also never got off the ground. However, soem of Goldberg's ideas did get mirrored by David Goyer (i.e. Blade as a dhampir or half-vampire).
The only two MVL projects to come out of New World were The Punisher and a Power Pack TV pilot. The list in the first pargraph shows that, as Goldberg points out in the article, many, if not most, of the longer established Marvel characters had had their rights sold to other film studios before New World's acquistion of Marvel, thus frustrating some of New World's goodwill from purchasing Marvel.
Of course, one wonders how New World could come out with a Punisher film despite then talks at the time of an Executioner movie with Stallone (see Don Pendleton's interview in the back of Executioner#75 or #76, the Boneyard). As it turns out, the Executioner has never received a film, so they got lucky there. Of course, few paperback original series of the 1970's or later received film adaptations; New World had bought the rights to .357 Vigilante, a series written by Lee Goldberg himself. The Penetrator may receive an adaptation from Roslindale, MA's Farmhouse Films, but do not expect an unironic version.
Anyway, New World lost Marvel later on. I would have found interesting had some of these projects gone through, since they would have featured some less well-established properties. |
|
Forum Locked
Topic Locked
