Superhero Filmmakers: Where's Our Watchmen?

I could keep going.

"wtf are you talking about, nobody said or wished for any such things."

40 grand for all of eclipse's creative rights sounds like a total fucking steal; I'm astonished that idiot hasn't done something profitable with it.

licenses that could easily be made profitable again with a bit of effort:

(give it to kyle baker or phil foglio or ty templeton or...

(another one that I'd buy in two or three reprint books)

If McFarlane had bought the rights for these "licenses" he'd have been "making them profitable" without the involvement or approval of the creators, based on 100% of the cases in which he did attempt to make Eclipse licenses profitable, wtf are YOU talking about?

So the friends that I saw Dark Knight with this weekend, none of whom have read the graphic novel*, were really, really excited by the trailer for this. Make of that what you will.

* - I will be rectifying this ASAP

http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2008/07/comic-based-mov.html

Rundown of upcoming licensed comix movies.

Scott Pilgrim? Really?

If McFarlane had bought the rights for these "licenses" he'd have been "making them profitable" without the involvement or approval of the creators, based on 100% of the cases in which he did attempt to make Eclipse licenses profitable, wtf are YOU talking about?

Relax. First of all, I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that if MFarlane bought the rights to their creative licenses that he bought the rights to the characters they published. I'm not really up on where Eclipse stood with writer's/artists ownership and I have a glancing wiki knowledge of what he might have "bought". My supposition was (and remains) that there are characters on that list ripe for a comeback and especially ready for film adaptation and that if MFarlane has the rights to do so and is choosing not to, he's a schmuck. Which I assume to be true. I was waiting for someone to chime in to let me know if this stuff is still creator held. Again, what the heck did he buy, then?

I had no idea Hamsters was back; I'd still love to see Templeton/Foglio/Baker on them, but I have no particular irony/nostalgia iron in the fire to follow up on that. I've seen Cynicalman and Mr. Monster work post Eclipse and have purchased; wasn't sure if the terms of the deal could've included them using their own properties or if they bought back rights or never gave them up in the first place. I actually just bought the Zot b+w reprint book on Friday. I wasn't aware that McCloud had been reissuing this stuff.

I'm plenty pro-creator rights; if you took my comments as crossed fingers that artists get their material taken away from them and screwed, that wasn't my intention. I'm hardly an industry wonk; I'm a comic reader. I'm just thinking out loud about what happened to the properties and musing about the odd climate wherein a Zot movie actually sounds hot in 2011.

That Gandolfini tidbit is interesting; I'm watching the Sopranos front to back right now, so he's very on my mind. He'd be a good dairy product interlocutor.

David Banner to voice Destiny in the Sandmang epic.

Also, what we need to be talking about is how bad the Spirit looks, not the Watchmen.

what we need to be talking about is how bad the Spirit looks

QFT. Though Samuel Jackson as a Nazi general is something else.

also

http://img2.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/080716/Comic-Con/scarlett-johansson_spirit_l.jpg

Is she supposed to be Satin or Silk or P'Gell or...?

Silken Floss.

Should point out this is Frank Miller's idea of who Silken Floss is (a sexy secretary) instead of Eisner's (a nuclear physicist).

yeah Spirit movie seems wrong on many levels

http://www.empireonline.com/images/trailer/breakdown/watchmen/8.jpg

fuzzy dong

...lop

That is how ladies like them.

s'all love forks, this thread just needed more hyperbolic posturing to keep the tone up.

just that the McFarlane/Eclipse story is FOURTEEN-YEAR OLD NEWS at this point and has been maaad hashed out in press, speculation, and a LOT in court. basically what he bought was a) the trademarked magazine titles Alien Worlds and Terror Tales and such, and b) fuck all else. He plainly had no idea what he was buying except that he hoped Miracleman would be involved; at one point in legal posturings his people claimed that they hadn't even got all the Miracleman film in the deal and what they had was too damaged to use - Neil Gaiman read this, went into his basement and opened the boxes they'd sent him and discovered almost all the series in completely usable shape.

(once he realised he didn't own shit, he spent yeeears bartering with Gaiman to exchange the IMAGINARY rights he'd not really bought for the genuine contractual rights Gaiman had in Spawn characters. when a court finally said "cut it out you dipshit, pay the man," he declared bankruptcy and carried on doing business as before without paying up.)

The Spirit movie is so wrong there's nothing at all to say about it, except to weep that such a long-standing respectable creator-defending publisher as Denis Kitchen should end up spending the entire second half of his life actively fucking up the legacy of his two deceased clients.

Scott Pilgrim? Really?

"Edgar Wright's making a Scott Pilgrim movie" was announced a couple of years ago, I think - around the time book 3 was published.

The eclipse story is news to me; I woulda been in college and somewhat unplugged from comics gossip at the time. So bear with me: "they hadn't even got all the Miracleman film in the deal and what they had was too damaged to use - Neil Gaiman read this, went into his basement and opened the boxes they'd sent him and discovered almost all the series in completely usable shape." <-- This suggests that there was film in the can on this project? What became of it?

As far as the Spirit goes, as much as it offends me, my inclination is to think Eisner would've been distraught by the outcome of the character. He was a businessman in much the same way Ray Charles was; I think he'd be happy to know his character would become a tentpole movie regardless of the dumbassedness of the final cut. Then again, I never read the Eisner and Miller interview book, so I'm not sure if they saw eye to eye. In the long run, it'll likely attract new fans to the archives and to Eisner's real legacy which can only be a good thing. Fuck if I plan on seeing it tho'.

sorry, "would NOT have been distraught by the outcome of the character"

enjoying all this watchmen talk

thot the preview looked great

This suggests that there was film in the can on this project? What became of it?

It's still in Gaiman's basement (or possibly a safe archival facility now), as the rights are still a clusterfuck. Film = printer's negatives.

so I'm not sure if they saw eye to eye

ha ha, no.

Y'all saw the Sally Jupiter WWII bomber/pin-up art, right?

Ï remember Gaiman mentioning in some intervíew back in the 90's that he was gonna do a movie based on Death: The High Cost of Living, I wonder what happened to that? I always liked that comic, and it's self-contained enough for a proper movie adaptation.

That's still on, Guillermo Del Toro is producing.

what pie does that man not have a finger in these days

gordo, are you on some access hollywood type shiz or are you industry?

to tie in with the film ... Watchmen the game?!?! http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3168969

I bet the 'destroy your therapist's faith in human nature' level is going to KICK ASS!

roflz

How about the 'sit and read a fucking comic book by a newsstand while the world dies round you' sidequest?

or hot "unable to get it up sex sequence" in Nite Owl's apartment

That can be beaten with the 'rubber suit fetish' power-up.

would love Watchmen game in the style of 1985

http://www.nme.com/news/my-chemical-romance/38442

ok, i'm in with shakey and his lot now. fuck this movie.

and they were doing so well

as long as there's no more corgan jinx

But this is cool:

http://savagecritic.com/2008/07/retail-intelligence-impact-of-watchmen.html

Friend of mine is very interested in it now so I'm going to lend him my copy.

best case scenario I guess

Was in the Comics Dungeon yesterday (no, really), buying a copy of WillWorld, checking to see if Final Crisis 3 is out yet (no luck). While I was there, they sold two copies of Watchmen. If nothing else, a lot more people will read the comic, and AM will make a LOT more money. Which he'll probably wrap in tinfoil and stuff into his sofa cushions, but still...

Should really stick my grafitti edition up on ebay at some point in the near future.

I had TWO random guys come up to me while I was at the Strand last week, assume I worked there and asked me where they kept copies of the watchmen.

otoh this could also be taken as further proof of how stupid the general public is

(a la the "I saw a shitty overproduced trailer - that means the comic book must be cool!" school of deep thinking)

wrong.

it is not stupid at all: a lot of people newly became aware of a decent franchise that has (until now) been something of a niche and underground sensation.

so niche and underground Time magazine rates it as one of the best novels of all time

(also lolz calling a one-shot 12 issue series a "franchise")

MOST PEOPLE DO NOT READ GRAPHIC NOVELS DUH

yes exactly - and yet most people watch shitty hollywood summer blockbusters