2000AD Film News in The Times !

[Adrian Bamforth]

"â??Whoâ??s he?â? asked the producer. My jaw dropped. Wagner is only the person who had invented the character and had written it weekly for the previous two decades!"

It doesn't surprise me but then it's the producer's job to make money not protect a comic's intelectual property. Arguably, it's better for their role if they don't too involved or interested in the creative process, that's the director's role.

Even so, I don't necessarily pin the blame on Danny Cannon for an unfaithful Hollywood movie version of Dredd - he doesn't get to do whatever he wants, he's just a job for hire (though I do personally find the film visually stunning and I don't have any real problems with the editing and casting). Take V For Vendetta for example - the Wachowski brothers wrote an ultra-faithful adaptation, then it goes through the mill and is rewritten by people who may not have even read the comic (and why should they?). The beauty of a comic is it costs virtually nothing to produce, takes only three or four people and has a loyal audience. The opposite is true of movies, so they are really not very interchangable mediums - the director is only one of many people trying to steer a juggernaut. Now if 2000AD had a loyal audience the same as Harry Potter, then we would be onto something.

[Leigh S]

Wasnt Charles Lippincott the producer interviewed though?  If so, I'm sure he had personally been resaponsible for pursuing the rights for dredd after coming into cntact with the character while working on Alien.... possibly?   If so, you'd think he would be aware of the creators.  Even if that is wrong, if a producer is giving an interview, you'd think he'd have to be in a position to know a little about the property, if only for the sake of not looking stupid.

On top of that, wagner and Grant had approached the film people with their own proposal for the movie script, so anyone interested in finding the right script might have been aware from that angle.  

I still want to know if the script/treatment/synopsis Wagner and Grant did still resides in the bank vault.

[Funt Solo]

::"dont recall posting to Johnny eyebrows either"

My funty-sense is tingling.  Wils referred to "eyebrows".  How come you know the name "Johnny eyebrows", when he hasn't posted under that moniker for years and you've only recently arrived on the board?

Watson!  Fetch my snuff!

[Matt Timson]

Bullshit alert- I've not gone by the name Johnny Eyebrows since way before you started posting here.

And to think, I defended your right to be a bit simple.  More fool me...

[Matt Timson]

Cuh!  Beaten to the punch by my own nemesis...

[JOE SOAP]

***Wasnt Charles Lippincott the producer interviewed though? If so, I'm sure he had personally been resaponsible for pursuing the rights for dredd after coming into cntact with the character while working on Alien.... possibly? If so, you'd think he would be aware of the creators. ***

There can be several producers on any film, so Lippincott wouldn't have been the only one, I remember at the time there was a much younger producer giving interviews in print and on TV about the Dredd film and he wasn't Lippincott. Producers are generally just money contributors/handlers and company men, so they only need to know that the film can be made well, on time and marketed properly. There are exceptions who make more creative decisions.

[Buddy]

Loads of comic book films do do that thing where they show some pages of the comic being flicked through at the beginning

Yeah Ade, I know that but I don't think it's enough, I don't think it really registers with the audience, all they're seeing is a few seconds of flashing images.

[Funt Solo]

My sister watches the Spiderman movies for two reasons: she loves movies and she fancies Tobey Maguire.  She's never going to read a spiderman comic.  It's not a movie and it's not got Tobey Maquire in it.

So, I figure there must be a lot of that.  I mean, great if a movie moves someone to read a book or pick up a comic - but it's never going to be a given.

[TordelBack]

Johnny Eyebrows?  That's a name I haven't heard in a long time.  He hasn't gone by that name since, oh, before you were born.

[Leigh S]

True enough, it mightnt have been Lippincott (though he did do a load of interviews), but even so, if you are going to be the public face of a film, and stand up to questions from journos about this film of yours (which at this point, they really only have the comic to refer to in terms of what the films about), isnt some knowledge of the films source going to be a handy basic starting point?

[Buddy]

Johnny Eyebrows eh, I remember when it was all just fields.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Fields? I remember when it were just a patch of dirt.

[Funt Solo]

Luxury!  You'd be lucky of a pool of primordial soup in my day.

[Buttonman]

Danny Cannon also bangs chief judge Hershey, well Diane Laine anyway, which is possibly why he didn't come on here to fight his corner.

The term 'mentalist' has been bandied about here with no thought for those with legitimate mental health concerns ('spanners'). The term can be traced back to an earlier case study and it's linked below so it can be used in the correct context in future.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwGSrmeVBrE" target="_blank">No YOU'RE a  Mentalist

[Peter Wolf]

     That is wierd.      I read that Wils post and thought who is this Eyebrows boarder?  Everything was kicking off at that point.  the name just came into my head out of nowhere but it sounded right somehow as if i already knew it.   Thats all i can say to explain it.   I wouldnt have known unless you pointed it out.