If you like stories of fan films leading to actual jobs in the film industry, then this ElfQuest story is the best thing you’ll hear all week. Stephanie Thorpe and Paula Rhodes, the creators of the fan film ElfQuest: A Fan Imagining, have gotten the actual rights to ElfQuest. If you never bought comics in the past 35 years, ElfQuest is a comic series created by Wendy and Richard Pini, and at one point was put out by Marvel comics, which is how I was introduced to it as a kid. And every issue is online for free, so you have no excuse to not know anything. And remember when you’re done to google image search for strange ElfQuest fan art so you’ll never sleep again in terror.
Here is the news that happened when I was busy strutting or whatever it is I do when I’m not updating TarsTarkas.NET:
**The comic Chopper – which reimagines The Legend of Sleepy Hollow as a headless biker – got some webisodes that served as a prequel, and they’ve been used to springboard a movie adaptation. Actors Tyler Mane and Andrew Bryniarski from the webisodes are set to return, and comic writer Martin Shapiro will write the script. You can watch the First Episode here
If this sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of the Kolchak: The Night Stalker episode about a headless biker, also called Chopper. Or maybe the episode of The Real Ghostbusters called The Headless Motorcyclist.
**Rick Yancey’s short story When First We Were Godsis getting filmed. Aron Eli Coleite will adapt the tale about wealthy immortals and a scheme for a rich man to kill his immortal wife and replace her with his mortal mistress (giving her the immortality.) Music video and commercial director Daniel Askill will direct.
**The 2000 A.D comic Stronghold comes closer to reality after three years on the backburner, with Stellan Skarsgard and Douglas Booth signed on as leads. Paul Finch created the Stronghold comic, about knights vs zombies, and he wrote the script. Jason Kingsley directs.
Ranulf and his team of heroic knights have just conquered the land of Wales. On their way back to the castle they call home, they happen upon an unforeseen enemy – one that never fixed on battling, the undead. Seems the Welsh have been conquered and killed, but the enemy has risen again as zombies!
**The cast for Monuments Men is awesome. Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, Jean Dujardin, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, and Hugh Bonneville are signed up so far for George Clooney’s latest flick, about a group of people who steal artworks from nazi Germany before Hitler can destroy them. It’s based on Robert M. Edsel’s book, and you can read about the real Monuments Men here.
**Nic Cage is in the business of making bad films again as he’s set to star in the Left Behind remake. Arclight Films is behind this latest franchise reboot. The original trilogy starred controversial banana enthusiast Kirk Cameron, as is based on the best selling series of books that are in now way incredibly awful. Vic Armstrong, a legendary stunt performer, is signed on to direct. This will be Vic Armstrong’s second feature direction after Dolph Lundgren’s Army of One.
**IMDB Top 250 in 2 1/2 Minutes
Let’s just ignore the politics of using the IMDB top 250 as a measure of anything and enjoy the editing.
**The giant monster comic Enormouswill get moviefied as well, with monster-experienced director Andre Ovredal signed on to helm the project. He directed Troll Hunter, which was pretty darn good. The comic was created and written by Tim Daniel and drawn by Mehdi Cheggour, and just moved from Image comics to 21 Ink Publishing. The prior work focused on a woman who saved lost children in a world where ecological chaos unleashes giant beasts that destroy civilization. More about Enormous at this link.
**Presented without comment:
**Speaking of The Wizard of Oz, if you love biting political mocking of the pundit-filled wasteland that is modern media and politics, you will love Frank Conniff’s The Wonderful Pundits of Oz! Fellow MST3K alum J. Elvis Weinstein is also a voice.
Assassins Creed is getting a flick! Ubisoft formed Ubisoft Motion Pictures to coproduce with New Regency and Fox (and to better buffer if this bombs!)
the film will follow the adventures of a guy who learns that his ancestors were once deadly assassins. After he’s kidnapped by a shady organization with ties to the Knights Templar, he is forced to travel back through time to collect artifacts.
An awesome article about the Super Mario Brothers movie and how it became the awesome disasterpiece we all love!
In case you missed it, the 50 Shades of Grey movie will be written by Kelly Marcel. Thumbs up for having a woman scriptwriter!
Whatever the heck the comic Insurrection is, it will now be a film. The plot has something to do with clones who fight wars lead a rebellion. But it’s not a prequel to Star Trek: Insurrection, which had the same theme with the Remans and Picard clone. This is a totally original space clone future war Insurrection movie.
Finding Kukan is a neat documentary about Robin Lung locating a lost copy of Kukan, an Oscar-winning documentary that was developed by Li Ling-Ai and Rey Scott. Kukan detailed China’s struggle against Japan during the Pacific War. The film is being restored and Robin Lung is detailing the restoration and a lot of history about the film, Li Ling-Ai, and Rey Scott with Finding Kukan. This chapter of forgotten history looks to be very interesting, and I am hopeful that this will be funded so the final product arrives sooner than later. Official site for Finding Kukan.
Another film restoration project is Different from the Others (Anders als die Andern), a 1919 silent film that is probably the earliest surviving work about LGBT people. It was directed by Richard Oswald and cowritten by Magnus Hirshfeld. Other LGBT friendly movies of the era were destroyed by the Nazis. The film needs to be restored and then will be archived as part of the Legacy Collection at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, (the world’s largest collection of LGBT moving images with over 20,000 pieces) and prints will be struck for distribution around the country. Different from the Others is another important piece of film history that needs to be preserved for future generations.
Let’s leave film history for a moment and go to films about history that didn’t really happen. Helen Keller vs Nightwolves sounds ridiculous at first, but then you realize it’s the latest film proposal from the team that brought you FDR: American Badass and other fine films. They even have a cast lined up. Though the historical characters fighting random monsters category is beginning to get overplayed, there is still a place for entertaining and ridiculous fare like this. And Kevin Sorbo is attached, so how can you lose? You can’t.
The comic Lore is basically MIB for mythical creatures, so getting MIB, MIIB, and MIIIB director Barry Sonnenfeld sounds like a good deal. Add that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is attached and it sounds even better. The Lore comic is made by Ashley Wood and T.P. Louise and features Shepherds that hold back mythical creatures from causing problems. Except the line of Shepherds is broken and a replacement is chosen, thus leading to drama fit for visual storytelling.
The screenplay by Cory Goodman and Jeremy Lott led to a bidding war between Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Sony. Warners won on a seven figure deal.
With The Rock attached and the studios excited because the film at least has enough good stuff to get people interested, maybe we’ll end up with a fun fantasy romp. And it’s cool how I didn’t make a joke about Lore also being the name of Data’s brother….WHOOPS!!
Men in Black series director Barry Sonnenfeld is ramping up to direct another comic book movie, Metal Men! Yes, we all know who Metal Men is, so no explanation is needed. Okay, fine, I’ll explain it for the one guy who accidentally lands here while looking for “pictures chucky” (actual search term) Good guy but probably crazy scientist Dr. Will Magnus made six robots, each based on a metal, and used them as a super hero team to fight bad guys. Gold is the leader and can stretch, Iron is super strong, Tin is insecure, Lead is a moron and can turn into a shield to block radiation, Mercury can melt, and Platinum can flatten and think’s she’s a real woman named Tina. And she’s in love with Dr. Will Magnus
At some point they get rebooted so they’re transferred consciousnesses of real people trapped in the robot bodies. And sarcastic female Copper gets added to their lineup. I’m not going to touch when they were the Death Metal Men, because even I’m confused.
It sounds like someone saw all that money Iron Man was bringing in, and decided that dudes made of all sorts of metal were really hot right now! Look out, Silver Surfer!
Lost in the shuffle of the big Comic-Con super hero movie announcements were a few announcements of smaller super hero flicks that will certainly excite someone. Maybe.
First up is everyone’s favorite maple syrup loving super hero, Captain Canuck! Yes, that’s an actual comic book character, older than me even, and now he’s heading for the big screen. In fact, the official announcement was at last year’s Comic-Con, but this year they announced that there was a writer for the film! Arne Olsen, famed scribe of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: the Movie, is doing the script. The Captain Canuck series began in 1975, where the first Captain Canuck patrolled Canada in the futuristic world of 1993, where “Canada had become the most powerful country in the world.” I’m not sure who Captain Canuck fought against, but it was probably radioactive beavers. Minds Eye Entertainment is the group bringing Captain Canuck to the screen.
Next up is a super hero who was briefly a Marvel comics character, and was sort of based on a real person! The Human Fly. You all remember him? Described as an “accident victim turned pacifist acrobat, the wildest hero of all…because he’s real!” He also smacks sharks with a cane, according to the cover of his comic book that I haven’t read. But scour those 10 for a dollar bins and you’ll be sure to find some back issues of The Human Fly. Rick Rojatt is the stunt guy he’s supposedly based on. Also a Human Fly showed up on an episode of the Simpsons, he stayed up all night dying his underwear. Such is the heroic pedigree of Human Flies! Eisenberg-Fisher Productions is independently producing this, which will hopefully cash in on all that Ant-Man money.
I hope both of these two films do well and then the heroes team up to fight Beaver Sharks! That’s a billion dollar movie idea, right there!
