CBR are running a news story quoting Jason Kingsley saying that two 2000ad strips are currently in negotiations in Hollywood. This has been linked back to the Rogue Trooper rumours a while back.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35473 (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35473)
I'm assuming the other isn't Buttonman as that already optioned (and creator owned) so Strontium Dog would be the obvious choice, or given Conan and fantasy is in the air at the moment maybe Slaine, or maybe... oh wild speculation gotta love it!
Either way interesting tit bit
This can only be good for The House of Tharg :thumbsup:
Quote"Rogue Trooper" follows a genetically engineered soldier who decides to break off from his squad and fight his own battles on an alien planet
From CBR that odd for them to get it wrong.
V
It's Maniac 5 and Urban Strike.
Just in case anyone gets excited, the negotiations are in 'Hollywood'.
I suppose Terry Gilliam's Indigo Prime is too much to hope for.
Blimey, I wonder which one the other property is ? I don't think it would be Strontium Dog as he's familiar to us but not I think the great mass of the rest of the Planet. Shame really. Surely there's a great Stronty story to be told.
Wonder if they are going to have another stab at Tank Girl? After all Hollywood loves remakes.
Tank Girl isn't Rebellion. My money is on SD. I would say Firekind but that has already been done.
V
Could Alec Worleys Age of the Wolf be in with a shout?
Werewolf's [and Vampires] seem pretty popular amongst the younger generation thanks to the Twilight Movie series. Maybe some Hollywood flunky saw something in it that he felt would interest a studio.
Maybe it's that Nikolai Dante movie that was optioned in 1997. Yeah I know, I can dream.
Tbh, I really don't see that many 2000ad properties working as movies. I think with things like Strontium Dog and Nikolai Dante, they are so quirky that so much would have to be changed for them to work on screen that they would end up bearing very little resemblance to the source material.
One that I think could be great if done well is Kingdom, ideally as a trilogy of cgi animations. Gene would make for a really engaging and memorable screen character, the story is simple but original. There is plenty of scope for merchandising it, and as most of the violence is just essentially giant bugs getting squished it could be aimed at a much younger audience than the likes of Dredd and Button Man. The relationship between the lead human character and their 'dog' is a great hook that could pull in a wide audience, and there would also be plenty of scope for insanely cool fight scenes.
I disagree Radiator. During my recent re-read of Dante, it struck me how good a movie or series of movies it would make.
I know it's extremely unlikely but; please be Nemesis. Or failing that, Shakara.
My top choice would be Bad Company. That would make an excellent film.
An ambitious fantasy action movie with lashings of sex and violence set in a resurgent Imperial Russia? And a Russia that is a fusion of past and future that blends the aristocracy and noble duels with nanotechnology and superheroics. Sorry, don't see a US/UK audience going for that at all.
The very first thing a movie producer would do would be to try and change the setting to America - or at the least make Dante himself an American. It would be like what they're currently doing to Akira. The second thing they would do would be to ensure the movie was a watered down, 12A version of the comic.
The comic is a tough sell as it is, let alone a big budget blockbuster (and it would require a HUGE budget).
I've always thought Dante would make for a fantastic videogame though. If you think about his abilities, he would make a perfect game avatar.
Ah fair point. I was thinking how well it would work if made. Not the likelihood of it making it through the Hollywood cookie cutter. Possibly me being naiive
Ha, fair enough - yeah I was thinking more in terms of how likely it would be to get made in the first place - what sort of budget it would require, could it attract an audience etc? Perhaps I should have been clearer in my previous post - there are very few series that I could see actually being made - much as I would love to see movies based on Dante, Stront etc.
I suspect there is a lot riding on Dredd, if that film succeeds (which is very much uncertain at this point) I expect it will turn into a bit of a feeding frenzy, with many series getting snapped up, no matter how suitable they are for adaptation.
Leviathan would make a great film/miniseries in the right hands.
Probably worth noting that Button Man's been in development hell for years. So the two could easily be Button Man (which we already knew about) and Rogue Trooper (which Morrison recently spoke of).
Quote from: radiator on 16 November, 2011, 10:17:34 AM
Ha, fair enough - yeah I was thinking more in terms of how likely it would be to get made in the first place - what sort of budget it would require, could it attract an audience etc? Perhaps I should have been clearer in my previous post - there are very few series that I could see actually being made - much as I would love to see movies based on Dante, Stront etc.
I suspect there is a lot riding on Dredd, if that film succeeds (which is very much uncertain at this point) I expect it will turn into a bit of a feeding frenzy, with many series getting snapped up, no matter how suitable they are for adaptation.
Leviathan would make a great film/miniseries in the right hands.
I agree that there's a ton of AD material that would make great films/ TV shows, but only Dredd has the cachet to drive interest on his recognisable name/ reputation. And even that isn't going to deliver the numbers required for a BO hit.
It would simply be somebody who is a fan of the source material deciding to that it would make a great film. But the type of film is obviously crucial.
About 1% of the people who watched Road To Perdition, A History Of Violence and From Hell had read the source material, or even knew they existed in comic form. Perdition had a decent budget and delivered various awards, but the latter two were more modest and From Hell had a big star and a fairly well known story anyway. But all three had some recognisable cinematic tropes: gangsters, Jack The Ripper, hitmen trying to live a decent life.
So it would be pretty unlikely that something like Dante, Shakara or Nemesis would get Hollywood or anyone else that excited. They're utterly fucking bizarre and would cost soooooo much money to make.
It's not Button Man.
Bet it's Bad Company. It's tailor made for the film treatment. It's a self contained story with plenty of action, the mystery of the 'black box' plot running throughout, colourful characters, war zombies, a sympathetic narrator for the audience to identify with.
Also, it could be toned down sufficiently to bring the budget into managable limits whilst still retaining all the essential ingredients that make it brilliant.
Do it Rebellion, DO IT!!!
Quote from: Molch-R on 16 November, 2011, 12:07:19 PM
It's not Button Man.
Well, that makes this guessing far more interesting, then!
Looking at 2000 AD properties and there's a lot of stuff I'd dearly love to see on screen, but that wouldn't be commercially viable (Nikolai Dante, Swimming in Blood), and so it'll be interesting to discover what possible movies are in the works and also how much the strip will change. (After all, some adaptations in Hollywood are quite straight but some barely resemble the original material and are little more than a name to drape over a production.)
I suspect Sláine could work nicely, as shown by that Spanish clip a whole back, as would many of the future war strips. Strontium Dog would, for me, be better off on TV, but I can't imagine its non-superhero X-Men crossed with Firefly would sell. (I'd very much like to be proven wrong on that.) But other posts in this thread point to another option: the single-shot stories that have a ton of potential for a unique movie. Leviathan, as radiator said, could be a fantastic movie, and with a little care it also wouldn't be prohibitively expensive.
Still, I'm sure most people are holding out for a Wireheads trilogy, or Dry Run! :D
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 16 November, 2011, 12:19:29 PM
Quote from: Molch-R on 16 November, 2011, 12:07:19 PM
It's not Button Man.
Well, that makes this guessing far more interesting, then!
*opens bag of popcorn, puts feet up*
QuoteBet it's Bad Company.
I'd say that's a pretty good guess.
Does anyone else remember that piece of promotional artwork for a proposed Bad Company film that was doing the rounds in the late nineties when Egmont/Fleetway were trying to tout their properties through that 'fantasy films(?)' division?
Pretty sure it was by Dermot Power...?
QuoteLooking at 2000 AD properties and there's a lot of stuff I'd dearly love to see on screen, but that wouldn't be commercially viable (Nikolai Dante, Swimming in Blood), and so it'll be interesting to discover what possible movies are in the works and also how much the strip will change.
I guess for a clue we should be looking at which titles Rebellion have recently been pushing in the US...
Slaine is probably the best known character outside of Dredd, but with the recent flop of the superficially similar Conan, I expect Hollywood wouldn't touch it with a barge-pole. Shakara, Dante, Nemesis and Zombo are imo too weird or quirky to warrant spending a vast budget on.
My money would be on
Bad Company, Kingdom or
Halo Jones. Maybe
ABC Warriors as a long shot.
I can see Defoe working too. I watched Solomon Kane recently and couldn't stop myself wishing it was a Defoe film instead.
Yeah, Defoe is as good a guess as any.
Regarding Halo Jones - as bad as most of them have been, have any of the Alan Moore film adaptations actually ended up losing money? I think most of them have done OK business, even LXG, which is often perceived as a flop. If there's a proven track record, it should be a pretty easy sell.
What's the betting that it's a really obscure strip that none of us would guess in a million years?
C'mon people, it's obviously Michael Bay's ABC Warriors :D
I can't even imagine how Nemesis would work, but I'd thought of the Firefly link for Strontium Dog before. It's the obvious one after Rogue that's far sure.
Dante? How could you find anyone cool enough?
Seriously though, would love to see an ABC Warriors movie. While I'm here, where's the damn cartoon already? Is the trailer all we're getting?
As long as they don't count American Reaper.
Besides it's clearly Dandridge
ABC Warriors would have a tough time against the box-office juggernaut that is Transformers. It's a real pity the cartoon didn't come off. Halo Jones... I just can't see that working in the cinema. I also think there's a bit of the ol' rose-tinted floating around about that, judging by my wife's reaction to it ("Well, it was... OK"), and I'm not really sure Moore's name counts for anything outside of comic geekdom.
One that would work really well—even thought there are productions not entirely dissimilar to it rattling around—and that's not yet been mentioned in this thread: Flesh. Sci-fi + dinosaurs + cowboys. How could anything go wrong? (Well, bar it being a massively expensive movie to make that not enough people go to see, obv.)
EDIT: Also, awaiting the thread getting to, say, about 100 suggestions, and for Molch-R to then pop back in and say "well, one of you's got it right" before running back to his popcorn and laughing maniacally.
Quote from: Molch-R on 16 November, 2011, 12:21:24 PM
*opens bag of popcorn, puts feet up*
*Gets the sack for skiving off*
The voices in my head tell me it's Danny Dyer as Bill Savage in an adaptation of Invasion/Savage.
Or Karl Howman as same, but in a tv sitcom version.
SBT
Quote from: brendan1 on 16 November, 2011, 11:51:25 AM
About 1% of the people who watched Road To Perdition, A History Of Violence and From Hell had read the source material, or even knew they existed in comic form.
Which incidentally is one of those things that drives me nuts. It also goes to show how far we are from actually getting the level of acceptance we would like to achieve of comics being appreciated as a medium rather than a genre. Iron Man et al have their comic origins blasted all over them. As soon as Hollywood or the mainstream perceive something as a 'serious' film its comic origins are told to not be so upperty and go and sit at the back of the room and not disturb anyone.
Drives me nuts.
Now its fair to say that a lot of films made from books will have a good chunk of the people who go see them not ever know where its origins lay but I'd safely hazard a bet that its a far larger proportion that do know from film to film compared to those that would know for a 'serious' comic based film.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 16 November, 2011, 01:15:17 PM
Flesh. Sci-fi + dinosaurs + cowboys. How could anything go wrong? (Well, bar it being a massively expensive movie to make that not enough people go to see, obv.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again no doubt, this would be such a great choice. Only thing that stands against it is if its believed that there are too many similar things about at the moment. Terra Firma, that Morrison penned Dinosaurs vs Aliens etc. Mind when has originality ever worried Hollywood?
It's Sinister Dexter. Do I win 5 pound?
Quote from: Colin_YNWA on 16 November, 2011, 01:39:33 PM
Drives me nuts.
Now its fair to say that a lot of films made from books will have a good chunk of the people who go see them not ever know where its origins lay but I'd safely hazard a bet that its a far larger proportion that do know from film to film compared to those that would know for a 'serious' comic based film.
Can't say that it bothers me and I'm not really sure about your other argument either unless you also restrict it to "serious" novel-based films. In which case the whole thing becomes a narrower and narrower definition of what you mean just to fit the thesis. In the interests of space-math ratio analysis, I'll bet a shiny silver sixpence that more people who saw Iron Man knew it was based on a comic (which, I'm guessing, it really wasn't: at least in the sense of a single storyline) than saw the Da Vinci Code knowing it was based on a book. I'm also willing to go double or quits on Ghost World vs 101 Dalmations.
Anyway, it's obviously going to be Cradlegrave knocked out as a cheap indie horror in the style of Eden Lake.
Quote from: The Cosh on 16 November, 2011, 02:06:07 PM
In the interests of space-math ratio analysis,
I'm too scared of someone who knows what that means to even dare a counter argument. I kowtow before the one who wields the "space-math ratio analysis"
Shako?
Robo Hunter?
Zenith?
Maybe an olde stylee "Vault of Horror" anthology of Future Shocks?
I'll get me coat...
Isn't Molch-R going to Thought Bubble? We could simply surround him and threaten him with terrible deeds until he tells us.
You could certainly try. A more effective strategy is to get me drunk*.
*still won't work though.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 16 November, 2011, 01:15:17 PM
EDIT: Also, awaiting the thread getting to, say, about 100 suggestions, and for Molch-R to then pop back in and say "well, one of you's got it right" before running back to his popcorn and laughing maniacally.
Thanks for the tip.
*inserts date in diary*
Would drink work for... other requests? ;)