The Week In Geek: Hulk TV Show, Good Wolverine and Alien
So last week was very DC Comics heavy here at the Week In Geek, so let me make it up to you Marvel Zombies with not one, but TWO Marvel pieces of news….
Marvel Sets Their Sites On Television, Starting With The Incredible Hulk
So for much of the past decade, Marvel Studios has ruled movie screens; now for this new decade, Marvel is setting their sites on television. And first up is the one Marvel Comics icon who has had long term luck in the past for them when it comes to live action TV: The Incredible Hulk. No showrunner has been picked yet, although the rumor is that they are looking at new Marvel TV guru (and former writer on Smallville) Jeph Loeb. I suppose the real question is how good can we expect the effects to be on this show? Life like CGI ain’t cheap, much less on a weekly basis. And no one is gonna buy a body builder painted green anymore. The Marvel Studios guys have their work cut out for them is all I’m sayin’. Along with the Hulk, the other series most likely to make it to the small screen is 80’s series Cloak and Dagger. That comic series was not very popular, but it keeps being pitched as a series, so someone must have a really good take on it I guess. ABC is looking to be the logical place for most future Marvel Television, as Disney owns both Marvel and ABC. Among the other shows targeted for development (along with their official pitches/taglines) are:
Heroes for Hire – focusing on ex-con Luke Cage offering to take on bad guys for a price
The Eternals – a race of superpowered beings live amid humanity in secret, inspiring legends
Agents of Atlas, Alter Ego – private investigator Jessica Jones takes on cases involving superhumans
Moon Knight, the Red Hood – a low-rent criminal discovers a cloak that gives him superpowers
Ka-Zar – a Tarzan-type and his saber-toothed tiger must journey to the concrete jungle to seek justice
Daughters of the Dragon – a dynamic female duo, one with a bionic arm and the other a granddaughter of a samurai, open a private-detective agency
The Punisher – Screw the official tagline…this is Geekscape, so if you are reading this you know damn well who he is.
It will be interesting to see if both the new Incredible Hulk series and the proposed new Wonder Woman tv show make it…it will be like 1978 all over again. Maybe they’ll make a new Fantasy Island to go with it?
Marvel Mutant Movies That DON’T Suck?? Maybe….
Is it possible that after the back to back massive creative disappointments of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Origins – Wolverine, that Fox has learned their lesson when it comes to their Marvel Mutant properties? (First off, having Bryan Singer come back to the franchise as producer for X-Men: First Class was a smart first move, and an even smarter move was to hire Matthew Vaughn as director) Now it seems that the next two mutant properties afer First Class from Fox/Marvel might actually be….good? The unlikeliest choice for a director for a Wolverine sequel, Darren Aronofsky, might actually be the guy to do it after all it seems. It isn’t so weird that Aronofsky is doing a big budget super hero flick (he is friends with Hugh Jackman from their time together on The Fountain after all) What is weird is that a meticulous and award winning director like Aronofsky is working for a micro managing and notoriously cheap studio like Fox. Apparently, the script by the Usual Suspects Christopher McQuarrie is supposed to be great , and based on the beloved 1982 Wolverine mini series by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller. Also, and this is just an educated fanboy guess…this movie is NOT gonna be called X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2. Expect this to just be called simply Wolverine, like that last movie didn’t really happen. In any event. how bad can Logan VS. Ninjas be??
Ok, I thought about that for a second…sorry.
Also this week, the scipt for the proposed Deadpool movie leaked, and several reviews have said the script (by the writers of Zombieland) is simply awesome. It is said to be dark where it needs to be, and light and funny as well without seeming forced, and totally pokes fun at the “Deadpool In Name Only” as seen in X-Men Origins -Wolverine. Word is that Fox really wanted Robert Rodriguez to make the movie for them, especially after making the cheap (and therefore profitable) Predators for them last summer, but he had to pass. The one person who can’t pass is Ryan Reynolds, apparently the entire script is written with Ryan Reynold’s particular brand of humor and phrasing in mind…but with back to back Green Lantern flicks coming up, will Reynolds even have the time? One more tidbit about this Deadpool movie…a major player is said to be none other than longtime X-Man Colossus. Considering that along with Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops,and Nightcrawler, Colossus is a cornerstone iconic X-Man, and he has had barely any screentime in the film series, much less character development. This would be a good chance to correct that little oversight.
Time To Vote For Pedro All Over Again
Shouldn’t this have happened back in like 2005? The Fox Network is ordering an animated series based on the 2004 cult hit Napoleon Dynamite. This will be the first animated series by Fox not produced by Seth McFarlane since 1978.( I kid. But it totally feels that way) Actually, In a way, waiting this long to produce an animated show based on Napoleon Dynamite might have been a good thing, as this movie (and more importanly, quoting this movie) got SO played out that even a fan like me started to hate on it and couldn’t watch it again till very recently. Maybe some time had to pass for the stink to wear off. Jon Heder and Efren Ramirez (Napoleon and Pedro) will reprise their roles along with most of the movie’s major cast members as well. Six episodes of the series have been ordered and is being executive produced by the original writers Jared and Jerusha Hess.
Casting Bits
Apparently Twentieth Century Fox wants Natlie Portman in Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel. I like Natalie and all (occasionally) but two words I never wanna hear again in the same sentence are Natalie Portman and prequel. The girl is good in certain roles, but action heroine she ain’t. Sigourney Weaver was an unknown in 1979, how about we try for an unknown this time as well?
Oh yeah, and the first bit of news for Chris Nolan’s third Batman movie came out this week: Tom Hardy (from Inception and Bronson) will be playing an unspecified part. Everyone is assuming villain, and I would say that is a safe assumption. So who will it be? Riddler? Kinda obvious, but obvious doesn’t have to be bad. Mark Millar claims the villain is Killer Croc, but considering that Nolan is doing a more reality based series than the comics or cartoons, I think that omits guys like Croc, Man Bat and Clayface. Tom Hardy’s turn as the villain in Star Trek: Nemesis was pretty much the only good thing about that flick, so color me excited no matter who he plays.
