In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we’ll continue to talk about the world of alternative comics and the impression they made on movie screens.

To call American Splendor the Seinfeld of comic books would do a disservice to both the comic book and the sitcom.  True, both dealt with the mundane events of everyday life—were about “nothing” if you will—but each approached it from different angles. Jerry Seinfeld’s self-named sitcom featured exaggerated parodies of himself and his friends pointing out the foibles of everyday life and human nature, often through extreme situations. Harvey Pekar’s comic book was a slice of his life told in a compelling way without having to resort to exaggeration or aggrandizement. It was simply him relating his everyday life—him going to work, paying bills, and dealing with health issues.

The comics were published by Pekar himself, but his partnership with legendary underground cartoonist Robert Crumb led to Pekar’s work gaining a bigger audience, notable collaborators such as Alison Bechdel, Spain Rodriguez, Drew Friedman and Joe Sacco, and mainstream attention in the form of him becoming a regular guest on Late Night With David Letterman. The film American Splendor was less an adaptation of any particular issue of the comic book, than telling of Pekar’s rise to fame. The film was audacious by conventional film standards. Directed by documentarians Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini with Paul Giamatti doing a masterful acting job of portraying Pekar, it mixed Pekar’s life story with animation and with documentary cut-ins featuring the real-life Pekar commenting on what was going on in the movie. The film won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival and Springer Berman and Pulcini garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Giamatti was criminally snubbed for his work, one of many to come in the actor’s career.

Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes reunited in 2006 to bring another one of Clowes’ stories to the big screen, Art School Confidential, which originally appeared in Eightball #7. While the original comic story was only four pages long, it was chock full of scathing observations about the institution of art school, from the failed artists that make up the teaching staff, the pretentious students that take classes there, and the ultimate fact that success at school has no bearing on being a successful artist post-school.

The comic story packs pertinent observations into those four pages, but that is all it does. There is no narrative, no protagonist, and no conflict. The story was just panel after panel of art school tropes that Clowes could puncture with his wit for their hypocrisy. So, for the film, Clowes added a protagonist—a freshman art college student by the name of Jerome (Max Minghella)—to act as a lens for further examination/deconstruction of art school life and what seems like a tacked on murder mystery subplot.

The film was a commercial ($3.3 million worldwide gross versus a $5 million budget) and critical (only 36% Fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) flop. I liked the film, but I had the good fortune to see it with someone who was an art major in college. It was much more enjoyable to see how close Clowes’ and Zwigoff’s satire cut to the bone.

The Scott Pilgrim series was the closest thing comics had to the Harry Potter novels. Each installment was a self-contained story that played part in a larger, finite epic, each installment was eagerly anticipated by its loyal fan bases, and was talked about endlessly by said fans during its duration.

Many people, including the comic’s author Bryan Lee O’Malley, were surprised by Scott Pilgrim’s popularity, but, looking back, it wasn’t very hard to see why it became popular. The series was an amalgamation of a number of cult cultures—video games, manga, indie/bar bands, superheroes, etc—combined into an epic romance. It had something for just about every audience that buys comic books. Taking this into consideration, it was no wonder that the series would be adapted for the big screen.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World might take its name from the second volume of O’Malley’s six-volume epic, but it manages to adapt all six books into one film. To purists, this might seem outrageous. After all, it took eight films to adapt the Harry Potter series onto the big screen.  But in the expert hands of Edgar Wright, the film, in my opinion, became even better than the comic books.

Wright and co-screenwriter Michael Bacall were able to cut just enough from the volumes to keep the plot moving without ever losing the feel and themes of the original story. Certain installments of the graphic novel, especially volume three, felt a bit padded. Wright and Bacall did a great job of tightening up the narrative to keep the film motoring along at a great pace.

Add to that Wright’s masterful directing, which melded live-action versions of O’Malley’s kinetic visuals with his own unique style, and you have one of the best comic book adaptations to come down the pike. However, the film was a box office disappointment ($47 million worldwide against a $60 million cost) which I lay at the hands of piss poor marketing on the part of Universal. I am holding out hope that the film eventually becomes a cult favorite with future generations, because it really deserves a long life in the pop culture consciousness.

Next, we take a break from covering comic book adaptations and take an extended look at what happens when Hollywood tries to come up with its own superhero properties.

After Edgar Wright showed test footage of proposed special effects from Ant-Man at San Diego Comic Con 2012, the world underwent months of speculation as to whether or not  might sneak the film in before Avengers 2. Unfortunately,  Deadline‘s review of an updated Disney release slate announced today put an end to the guessing. No, Ant-Man will not be part of Phase II, it will be the first part of Marvel’s Phase III, with a release date of November 6, 2015, a little over six months after Avengers 2′s release date of May 1, 2015.

Rumor had it that production on Ant-Man would begin after Wright wrapped up The World’s End, perhaps as soon as early next year. The release date might put this rumor in doubt, as typically even the most effect heavy films don’t take over two years to make.

Another thing to consider is that if Marvel sticks to it’s strict two movies per year development plan, this means 2015 is all sewn up with Avengers 2 and Ant-Man. If we are going to see a Black Panther film, a Hawkeye/Black Widow spin-off, or a solo Mark Ruffalo Hulk film, the earliest we’d see any of these would be 2016. Probably later, because sequels from existing film franchises will also need to be put into the mix.

When Marvel Studios screened some test footage shot by director Edgar Wright for an adaption of the superhero Ant-Man at the San Diego Comic Con a few weeks back, it was the first visible movement we had seen on the project in some time. And since then there has been speculation as to when the film might actually take the next step and get into active production.

There is now a new report floating around that Ant-Man will go before cameras early next year in the same London studio that is currently hosting Marvel’s Thor sequel, Thor: The Dark World, shooting. This would certainly allow the film to be released in 2014, a timeframe that Marvel’s co-president Louis D’Esposito has already hinted at.

This certainly lines up with what we know about director Wright’s current workload. He is now in the process of prepping The World’s End, his third comedy collaboration with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. That should begin shooting sometime in the four or five weeks. That would place production concurrent with Dark World. Furthermore, Pegg has tweeted that Wright would move on to Ant-Man after World’s End.

Now it should be noted that the original source for this story is Latino Review, who usually have a good track record with stories out of Marvel Studios. However, Latino Review recently was on the receiving end of a letter from Marvel politely threatening them to give up the name of the source for their scoops. Latino Review rightly refused to do so. I would suggest that there is a remote possibility that Marvel internally floated the Ant-Man shooting date to a small number of people in the hopes that Latino Review’s source would inadvertently reveal him or herself. As you know, the best way to disguise a lie is to cloak it in the truth. I’m not saying that this is probably the case with this news, but it is something to keep in the back of one’s mind until we get some independent collaboration.

Earlier this week, we speculated that the earliest that Marvel Studios may get around to making director Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man adaption with their release schedule being booked through 2014 is 2015. But Marvel co-president and director of the new Marvel One-Shot short film Item 47, Louis D’Esposito hints that the company’s two-films-a-year schedule may be adjusted to let Ant-Man slide in to 2014.

In his interview with Collider, D’Esposito states that there has been some discussion about expanding Marvel’s release schedule beyond the current two films a year timetable and while they don’t want to stretch themselves too thin, they might do so if they were sure that they could maintain the same level of quality that they have so far. Ant-Man might be the place where they start.

That might be an opportunity where we do a third film, depending on his schedule when he finishes World’s End. But he’s such a competent filmmaker; the script is in great shape. The test will prove a lot of things on the visual effects front: how do we handle the shrinking, obviously, and the scale issues, because when he’s small he’s a half-inch. So we’re gonna work that out, maybe that’s when we do a third film.

Given that there has been a lot of positive reaction to the special effects test footage that Edgar Wright shot for the film and which was screened last week at San Diego Comic Con, Marvel certainly has an incentive to get the film out as soon as possible.

Currently, Wright is gearing up to shoot The World’s End, his third cinematic collaboration with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. If he were to jump into Ant-Man right after, he could very easily have the film ready for a 2014 release. Now currently, Marvel has Captain America: The Winter Soldier scheduled for April 4, 2014 and Guardians Of The Galaxy for August 1, 2014. If those dates hold, I could see Marvel possibly dropping Ant-Man into December. Then again they could conceivably rearrange their 2014 dates for Captain America and Guardians Of The Galaxy to accommodate Ant-Man.

With this past weekend’s screening of director Edgar Wright’s test footage for his long in-development comic book adaption Ant-Man at San Diego Comic Con and Marvel Studio’s release of some title art for the film, I feel safe in saying that we can take that as a tacit admission that the film is actually, finally happening.

But when will it happen? Simon Pegg thinks he has an answer. In a tweet over the weekend, he stated that Wright would be directing Ant-Man next year, after he finishes work on their soon-to-shoot collaboration The World’s End this fall.

As the two have been collaborators for several years, it is safe to say that Pegg may have some inside information shared with him by Wright. Though as the World’s End projected schedule has been in place for a while now, it does just seem logical for Ant-Man’s production to follow it at some point. More than likely, Pegg was addressing fan questions as to whether Ant-Man would take precedence over World’s End.

That leaves us with the question as to how much later will the Ant-Man shooting take place after World’s End wraps. That would probably depend on exactly where Marvel wants to slot it into their release schedule. If Marvel sticks with their two films a year schedule, we won’t be seeing Ant-Man until 2015 at the earliest. Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World already have the 2013 slots and Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the just announced Guardians Of The Galaxy are set for 2014.

Everyone is working under the assumption that we will be seeing The Avengers 2 in 2015, but that has yet to be confirmed. But if so, does Marvel slot Ant-Man in before that film or will it be used to kick off the studio’s post-Avengers 2 “Phase Three?”

The Marvel Studios panel at San Diego Comic-Con would be a highly anticipated panel even if The Avengers didn’t set box office records.  But the expectations are even higher now as people are wondering how the studio is going to be able to top 2012. Some of that speculation ends here, and new speculations will begin.

• Thor 2 now officially titled Thor: The Dark World.
• Captain America 2 now officially titled, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. As fans of the comics will know, the Winter Soldier was Cap’s partner Bucky, who instead of dying, was captured by the Russians, brainwashed and turned into an assassin. So, did Sebastian Stan have a deal for two films?
• It’s official! Coming to us from Marvel on August 1, 2014, the Guardians of the Galaxy! We’ll be having posts in the next few days concerning what to expect from the film, including a history of the concept and characters as they appeared in the comic book.
• For those of you crestfallen that Ant-Man was not the next in line for the Marvel film treatment, don’t despair too much. Edgar Wright was there and presented the rumored test footage he did to show the shrinking special effects, This is what Brendon Connolly at Bleeding Cool had to say about it:
  

  As he walked on stage to take a seat, Edgar Wright held up a copy of the Ant Man comics. This one.Wright said that he wanted to adapt that story, To Steal an Ant Man, and that’s still his plan before teasing us and then, to swooning, unveiled his test footage for the film.

  The sequence was largely unfinished but showed ant man looking out of an air vent into a corridor towards an elevator door protected by two CIA-looking suited up goons. He grows to full size, leaps through the air and shrinks as he does so, delivering his kick at ant size, but will full-scale weight.

  During the scene he lands on the barrel of one of the agents guns and runs along it mini sized.

  The character has not been cast, and the performer in the suit was only a stand in, but Wright did speak a little about the costume. While it won’t be final, it did indicate what they are going for – a mixture of the contemporary look and the silver age design.

  Wright says that “Ant Man will kick your ass… one inch at a time.” I don’t know about one inch at a time. My ass is already kicked up and down.

• The Iron Man 3 footage showed us that, yes, Ben Kingsley is The Mandarin, and that he will have ten rings and ceremonial garb.

No mention of The Black Panther, or any of the other rumored films Marvel has in the pipeline. I’m sure that will come in time. But now, what do you think?

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we continue our four week “vacation” overseas with the most notable comic film franchises Europe has to offer.

This month, not counting serials, Batman will be getting his ninth full length feature film.

Piker.

Next year, Superman will be getting his seventh full length feature film.

Slacker.

The French comic book character Asterix has had 11 feature films to his name, both live action and animated. But before we get to the Gallic warrior, let’s talk about one of last year’s most talked about imported comic book films.

The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn was one of the most visually stunning films of last year, as any film written by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson would be.

As flashy as it was, the performance capture film (where computers animated their digital characters over the real actors wearing computer sensors) did not do well in the United States, although its almost $373 million overseas take pretty much guarantees that the two planned sequels will get made. However, this mix of computer animation and live action was not the first animated or live-action Tintin film to hit the big screen.

Tintin was created by Belgian artist, Hergé (aka Georges Remi), in 1929 and he remained the sole writer and artist on the strip up until his death in 1983. The character is a Belgian reporter whose quest for stories takes him around the world and involves him in a number of hair-raising adventures, aided by his dog Snowy and his friend, Captain Haddock.

The character made his first appearance on film in 1947’s stop-motion animation Belgian offering, The Crab with the Golden Claws, adapted from the ninth book of the 24-book graphic novel series.  Other animated films would follow—1969’s Tintin and the Temple of the Sun and 1972’s Tintin and the Lake of Sharks. Tintin would also receive two live action adaptations as well—1961’s French film, Tintin and the Golden Fleece and 1964’s French/Spanish production Tintin and the Blue Oranges.

The Smurfs were another Belgian import to arrive in American theaters last year with the help of CGI. Only this time, just the Smurfs themselves were computer animated, voiced by such celebrities as Jonathan Winters, Katy Perry and Alan Cumming, as they shared the screen with human actors such as Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays. The 3D film opened to horrible reviews (it’s currently only 23% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) but that wasn’t enough to keep it from being a hit. The$110 million  film made over $563 million worldwide. That was enough so that not one but two sequels were greenlighted. The Smurfs 2 is scheduled for a July 31, 2013 release and The Smurfs 3 is planned for July 24, 2015. The main cast is set to return for both sequels.

But this wasn’t the first time Peyo’s (nee Pierre Culliford) 1958 creations have hit the big screen. The blue creatures have also graced the screen in 1965’s Belgian compilation, The Adventures of the Smurfs and in The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, a film made and released in Belgium in 1976, yet not released in the U.S. until 1983.

Asterix has not had any Americanized adaptations—yet —but its 11 films mean that it’s enormously popular in Europe. Created for Pilote magazine in 1959 by writer René Goscinny and illustrator Albert Uderzo, the character’s 34 volumes of graphic novels have been translated into over 107 languages, selling more than 325 million copies worldwide.

The story takes place in a small coastal village called Armorica of Gaul (present day France) circa 50 BC. The village is able to stave off being engulfed by the Roman Empire due to a magic potion brewed by a local druid that gives them temporary superhuman strength. Asterix is the leader of the village, and his sidekick is a manchild named Obelix, whose super strength is permanent due to his falling into a cauldron of the potion as a youngster.

Of the 11 Asterix films, eight have been animated and 3 have been live action. The animated films are Asterix the Gaul (1967), Asterix and Cleopatra (1968), The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (1976), Asterix Versus Caesar (1985), Asterix in Britain (1986), Asterix and the Big Fight  (1989), Asterix Conquers America (1994) and  Asterix and the Vikings (2006).  The live action films include Asterix & Obelix Take On Caesar (1999), Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra (2002) and Asterix at the Olympic Games (2006). Oscar-nominated actor Gérard Depardieu has appeared as Obelix in all three live action films. Other guest stars include Oscar winner Roberto Benigni and Monica Bellucci.

Next, we take a look at the live action franchises from Japan, then tackle some heroes on the half-shell.

Why do I have the feeling that Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige is having a good laugh this evening?

No sooner does news break that an adaption of the comic book heroes the Guardians of the Galaxy may be the occupying the second of the two announced 2014 dates that the studio has staked, then comes word that writer/director Edgar Wright has shot some test footage for his long in-development with the studio big screen treatment of Ant-Man. The open spot on Marvel’s release calendar is on May 16. The studio currently has Captain America 2 scheduled a month earlier on April 4.

The Hollywood Reporter was first with the news that Wright shot the footage a few weeks ago as a test to see how some of the proposed effects would look on the big screen and to try to give studio execs an idea of what the tone of the film would be.

Ant-Man is actually scientist Hank Pym, who discovers a type of radiation that allows him to shrink in size. Armed with a device that lets him control ants, Pym was a founding member of the Avengers. He would also sometime use a reverse of his shrinking process to fight evil as Giant Man. Wright and co-writer Joe Cornish have been working on the screenplay for the project for the past couple of years.

Of course, this doesn’t automatically mean that Ant-Man will be moving into production anytime soon. If Marvel decides to finally greenlight Ant-Man, they will need to wait until Wright shoots The World’s End, his third comedic collaboration with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost which is scheduled to start shooting this fall.

No matter which project gets the nod, I would expect the answer to come next month from Marvel at the San Diego Comic Con.

If Latino Review is correct, a Marvel superhero’s long road to the cineplex will end in 2014, and those of us waiting for Ant-Man will have to wait a little bit longer. Because the website is quoting four sources (FOUR!) that say the mystery Marvel film that will come in 2014 with star Black Panther.

Black Panther was a character created in 1966 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in Fantastic Four #52. His real name was T’Challa and was a potentate in the fictional African nation of Wakanda who earned the right to wield a sacred “Panther Totem” that gave him the strength, agility and senses of the cat the item was named after. While based in Africa, he made many trips to America and would eventually marry X-Men member Storm.

These facts, that Black Panther first appeared in Fantastic Four and married a member of the X-Men, that the rights to the character would belong to FOX, who holds the rights to all the anciliary FF andf X-Men characters. But Black Panther’s rights have been free-standing for a long time before either of those franchises.

Talk of a Black Panther film began way back in 1992 as a vehicle for Wesley Snipes. The film became a pet project for Snipes, who would express his hopes start filming the adaptation in numerous interviews for the years that would follow. But the project had a number of false starts over the last 20 years, to the point that it looks like Snipes has aged himself out of the role.

Marvel stated in 2007 that Black Panther was one of the ten properties that it would develop in its distribution partnership with Paramount. In early 2011, Marvel commissioned a Black Panther script from Mark Bailey. And a quick reference to the character appears in IRON MAN 2 on a SHIELD monitor listing superpowered individuals around the world.

Again, this is just a rumor. We probably won’t know anything definite until the San Diego Comic Con. But as it stands right now, I am conflicted about this announcement. I have been a long-time fan of Black Panther through his involvement in the Avengers, and having an African hero would make a strike for diversity in the superhero film landscape. But I can’t help be disappointed that Edgar Wright’s Ant-Man isn’t ready to go yet, and not capitalizing on the strong buzz around some of the characters from The Avengers is a big mistake, especially Hulk, who could be a tentpole franchise for Marvel if they build on what Whedon did in that film.

Johnny Depp is in the midst of bring one of television’s most famous vampires to the big screen in the currently in-production Dark Shadows with director Tim Burton, but another role that may be in his future is that of one of television’s most famous vampire hunters. No, not Buffy, but intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, The Night Stalker!

Disney is looking to bring the cult 1974 television series to the big screen and have tapped Scott Pilgrim director Edgar Wright to oversee its development. Depp has already been signed on as a producer for the project and will very likely to star in it as well.No writer has been hired for the project, though with Wright’s frequent habit of serving as a co-writer on his films, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him do similar duty here.

The character of Carl Kolchak came to television in a made-for-TV film adaption of Richard Matheson’s novel The Night Stalker with Darren McGavin as the tabloid journalist unable to convince his editor that a vampire is behind a string of serial murders in Las Vegas. High ratings lead to a sequel TV-movie, The Night Strangler and then the short-lived weekly series. The less about the even shorter-lived TV revival the better.

isney certainly likes to be in the Johnny Depp business. The four Pirates Of The Caribbean films have earned the studio a cool couple of billion dollars at this point, and they have high hopes for next year’s The Lone Ranger. I would expect that if Lone Ranger does well, the studio will put The Night Stalker on the fast track. In the meantime, Wright still waits to see if Disney and Marvel Studios will grant a greenlight to Ant-Man, which he is attached to direct and which he co-wrote with Attack The Block‘s Joe Cornish.

Via Deadline.