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 talk about the third of three of the best “superhero” film franchises that only appeared in comics after the films were released. 

If you were like me, you were pretty excited at the end of The Matrix.

As a refresher for those of you that saw it (and if you haven’t, well, consider this your spoiler warning), the film ends with our main protagonist, Neo (Keanu Reeves) speaking on the telephone. Neo has just gone through a journey of discovery and growth. See, the world in which Neo lives isn’t really real. It’s a mass hallucination implanted in humanity’s head by machines, which use human beings as their power source.  Neo was supposed to be the savior of the human race, one who could train his mind both consciously and subconsciously to see the manufactured reality, which is called the Matrix, for what it was, to shape it for his own purposes, and to beat the machines at their own game. During the climactic scene of the film, Neo lives up to his potential, overcoming even death in the computer created world. Neo had become essentially invulnerable and incredibly powerful.

Let’s get back to the phone call. Neo ends the film by speaking into the telephone that he will show the rest of humanity that is trapped in the Matrix that anything is possible. He then hangs up, steps out of the phone booth, and flies into the air and off into the sunset.

As a comic book fan, I was pretty psyched about this ending. If Darkman, which we covered last time, could be seen as an off-brand Batman, The Matrix franchise was setting itself up as an off-brand Superman, with Neo in the role of the Man of Steel, fighting a cyberpunk reimagining of Brainiac in the machines. There’s even the similar Christ metaphor between the two.

This theorem might seem to be a stretch, but is it really? During the struggle to get Superman back on the big screen, constant effort was made to make that franchise more like The Matrix, right down to replacing Supes’ trademark costume with something black and Neo-like.

But this was all misplaced expectations. The Matrix sequels didn’t really go in the way I, or anybody expected.

You can write a whole series of blog posts on the many things that went in to influence The Matrix. People have seen everything from the major world religions to the writings of Jean Baudrillard to an episode of Doctor Who in the franchise. But one undeniable influence has to be the world of comic books, especially the worlds of manga and anime. Akira was the inspiration for the “bullet time” effects the films made famous. Ghost in the Shell was used to pitch the movie and provided the template to its overall style. The Wachowski siblings, the creative force behind the franchise, are comic book fans and wrote comics for Marvel’s Epic imprint before their writing ever appeared on movie screens. And comic book artists Geof Darrow and Steve Skroce worked as concept and storyboard artists on the film.

These are the comic book inspirations that are admitted to. However, in a 2005 interview that ran on the Suicide Girl’s website, Grant Morrison claimed that The Matrix was “plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image” copied from his Invisibles miniseries, the first issue of which was released five years before the movie opened.

Regardless if whether the comic book influence was admitted to or denied, The Matrix was a comic book film without being based on a comic book. It captured the complexities and layers found in the comic books of the day and put them on screen in such a way that audiences could easily digest them. And, to further cement the comic book/film bond, the Wachowskis published tie-in graphic novels after the first film became a success.

I’d argue that the Wachowskis never expected there to be a demand for a second or third Matrix film. My evidence comes from one of the big battles featuring Neo in The Matrix Reloaded, I believe it was the one where he fought the Merovingian’s lackeys.

During the course of the battle, Neo bleeds. This upset me to no end. Not because it would not become the Superman allegory that I wished for, but because it showed some shoddy writing. After the end of the last movie where Neo actually overcame death, nothing, but nothing should make him bleed. But bleed he did. I understand the logic—you want your audience to worry about the protagonists, having the life and death situations they face in the film truly be life and death. But in this case, it was backsliding. It was as if the Wachowskis couldn’t figure out how to keep the audience interested in a superhuman hero, so they back stepped and made him more human.

After that, I was pretty much done with the film. Forget the fact that the human survivors’ first reaction when faced with impending robot doom was to throw a sexually charged rave or that the climax essentially boiled down to Neo talking to an old guy in a room. Nothing the creators could have done would have been worse than weakening Neo in my eyes. The Matrix Revolutions wasn’t a grand finale to me but rather a putting the franchise out of its misery coda.

The fact that The Matrix was so perfect made the entire franchise such a disappointment. What was crisp and new became turgid and hackneyed. That is truly a shame.

Next up, we’ll cover a trio of original superhero movies that play with film genres to get their points across.

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 talk about a different kind of British invasion as some British comic book icons come over to the States in film form.

If there is a reoccurring theme of this history, it’s that Hollywood often screws up the American comics they adapt. Whether it be hubris, a lack of understanding, or plain old incompetence, more comic book movies are changed for the worse by Hollywood because the powers that be just “didn’t get it.”

If Hollywood has a hard time making movies out of comics published in its own country, how would it fare adapting Britain’s favorite comic book characters? Judging by two examples from the 1990s, it would not fare well at all.

Judge Dredd is perhaps the most famous British comic book character of all time. I believe that only Miracle/Marvelman would give him a run for his money. Created by Pat Mills, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra and first appearing in the second issue of the seminal British comic book magazine 2000 A.D., Dredd was a combined cop, judge, and executioner in a post-apocalyptic United States. He is the best cop in Mega-City One, the future version of New York City, if New York City took up most of the Eastern Seaboard. His jurisdiction ran from busting petty vandals to stopping another nuclear Armageddon. He would face off against mutants, cyborgs and gangs in the process of doing his job.

The character appeared in every issue of 2000 A.D. since his first appearance in 1977 and was one of the few British comic book characters to get his own magazine. British creators that went on to have some success in the States worked on the character, including Brian Bolland, Ian Gibson, Brendan McCarthy, Alan Grant, Steve Dillon, Barry Kitson, John Higgins, Garry Leach, Kevin O’Neill, Liam Sharp, Glenn Fabry, Alan Davis, Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison and many, many more.

Judge Dredd has quite a following in the United States, with many fans becoming exposed to the character through reprints, through DC licensing the characters, or imports of British mags. This stateside popularity caught the attention of Hollywood producers, who decided, in 1995, to give the character his own movie called Judge Dredd.

The fate of the film was sealed when Sylvester Stallone was cast in the lead (although, to be fair, it might not have been a better movie if the producers’ original choice, Arnold Schwarzenegger, agreed to take on the film). Cobra proved he wasn’t good at being a grim dispenser of justice. And Dredd wasn’t the type of role where he could use his charm and charisma to get by.

So it started off bad, but the filmmakers made it worse. Instead of the subversive satire and humor, we get a wacky comedy sidekick, and, adding insult to injury, they cast Rob Schneider in the role.  They add a possible romance with Diane Lane’s character, Judge Hershey, when the comic’s Dredd’s foregoing any romance in favor of pursuing justice is a pretty big character trait. And, in what might seem like a minor point to the uninitiated but is a big deal to the Dredd fans, Stallone goes through most of the movie sans Dredd’s trademark helmet. In the characters 35 year plus career in the comics, the adult Dredd only took off his helmet a handful of times, and never in any way that you can make out his features.

Judge Dredd got a remake this year with Dredd, and it was better even before the first frame was shot. John Wagner, co-creator, gave the script an a-ok while the film was in pre-production, saying it was closer in tone to the original comics than the Stallone vehicle. That’s a pretty good way to start a reboot to a franchise that wasn’t done right the first time around, isn’t it?

As for the movie itself?  Well, it was a vast improvement over the Stallone version (but it was hard for it not to be). As a comic book adaptation, Dredd remained true to feel of the source material, capturing the characterization of Judge Dredd to a T and employing the graphic violence and morbid humor quite well. As a film, Pete Travis’ stylized direction is visually interesting, and the film holds up well against other films set in a grim future such as RoboCop, Road Warrior, and Escape From New York.

Unfortunately, the ghost of the Stallone version kept people out of the theaters. As of October 25, 2012, after what was then five weeks of release, the film earned less than half of its $50 million budget back ($23,467,110 to be exact) worldwide, with little chance of it making up the difference. This is a shame because I truly believe the film deserved a bigger audience than it got. Hopefully, its audience will find it on home video.

The same year the first Judge Dredd film came out, Hollywood adapted another satirical British comic book character from a post-apocalyptic Earth. The film is Tank Girl, based on the character of the same name created by Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett (who would later gain fame with his partnership with Damon Albarn in creating the multimedia rock group, The Gorillaz).

Whereas Judge Dredd was a violent and grim satire using a dystopian future as a commentary on the present-day world, Tank Girl takes a more absurdist take on the theme. Tank Girl, an Australian mercenary who owns and lives in a tank, made her first appearance in Deadline #1 in 1988. Her boyfriend is a mutated anthropomorphic kangaroo. Her missions include such tasks as procuring colostomy bags for the Australian president. She became an underground sensation and a counterculture icon, which means she was a perfect choice for Hollywood to try to make into a mainstream film. Of course, this being Hollywood, they had no idea how to get this done.

The film was directed by self-professed Tank Girl fan Rachel Talalay and was produced by Deadline’s publisher Tom Astor, so you’d think that the film would be a fairly faithful adaptation, right? Not when it’s being done by a major Hollywood studio it’s not. United Artists put the film through a gauntlet of test screenings and focus groups and more focus groups, and calling for script changes and editing cuts accordingly. Talalay had this to say about the experience as it pertains to one particular scene:

“Then there was a tag where it rained and TG/Jet G/and Sub Girl plan to take over the world (the umbrella hat shot) (rather than the animation). Someone in the obnoxious focus group said they didn’t understand why it rained. So out it went. We put in the animation, which I liked anyway, but first time we screened it with the animation, someone in the focus group said I wish it had rained at the end. Then everyone agreed. I hate test screenings, especially when the studio takes one person’s opinion to be gospel.”

By trying to make it a film that would please everyone, it made the film a disappointment to Tank Girl’s fans, creators and the general public. It grossed under $6.6 million worldwide against a $25 million dollar budget.

Next time, Will Smith gets jiggy with it in a stealth comic book adaptation.

I would venture to say that most people were caught by surprise by the speed with which Grant Morrison and Darrick Robertson’s comic book miniseries Happy! was optioned to be adapted into a film just a few weeks after the first issue hit the stands.

This weekend at New York Comic Con, Morrison talked briefly about how he met with the project’s attached director The RZA and how the two were instantly simpatico -

He got in touch. He was interesting in seeing the comic. We met in Los Angeles and the first thing that we started talking about was UFOs. The minute we sat down, the first words out of his mouth were “So, the UFOs, then?” And the two of us were instantly bonded from that moment on. He’s obviously a cool guy and interested in the same stuff I am. He had a take on the material, and a viewpoint that I like.

Morrison also elaborated a bit as to the inspiration for the comic’s story of a corrupt ex-cop turned hit man who finds himself the onlying one seeing Happy, a talking, miniature, blue horse with wings who dispenses all sorts of cherry advice, admitted that the idea was inspired by a song by the Hollies.

I was listening to this song called “Pegasus.” It was a really creepy song. I quite like the Hollies and I don’t want these guys to hear me continually saying that their songs are creepy, I actually enjoy their songs. It’s just that this one is particularly creepy. It’s about a flying horse, a pegasus, and if you take drugs you see this flying horse, which is what I think the song is about. And into my head came this notion that imagine if this thing was real because the song is sort of sickening and saccharine, that really makes you want to vomit when you listen to it. And I thought imagine this animal is real, because a pegasus shouldn’t make me want to vomit! Suddenly the notion of if you were the most cynical man on the earth suddenly stuck with this little cartoon horse who is indefatigably cheerful and really irritating… If you could imagine Martin Lawrence while I’m doing this thing. So I kind of saw it as that. It just seemed like the ultimate buddy movie idea of having these complete opposites plunged into a ridiculous story involving pedophile Santa Clauses and drugs and sex.

Morrison is signed to write the script for the film. But the project is in its earliest stages, it doesn’t even have any financing yet, so a finished project could be quite a way off if it ever happens. We’ll be watching.

The first issue of the new comic book miniseries Happy!, by writer Grant Morrison and artist Darick Robertson, has been out in stores for less than a month but it is already being considered for adaptation to the big screen.

Rapper/actor/director RZA is teaming up producer Reginald Hudlin to bring the movie to your local cineplex. Morrison is onboard to provide the screenplay. The trio is currently shopping the project around to studios.

The comic mini-series centers on Nick Sax, a corrupt ex-cop turned hit man who finds himself the only one seeing Happy, a talking, miniature, blue horse with wings who dispenses all sorts of cherry advice. Think of it as a mashup of Sin City, The Bad Lieutenant and a hilariously inappropriate amount of the Care Bears.

Does Happy really exist? Is Nick having some sort of psychotic break from reality? How does it all end? No one knows because the next three issues of the book have yet to be published. But that single issue is a pretty crazy ride and turned out to be a popular seller, at least at the local comic shop I frequent.

This isn’t the first Morrison comics work to be optioned for film. His three-issue miniseries We3, about a dog, a cat and a rabbit who have genetically enhanced intelligence escaping from the military laboratory where they were created was optioned by New Line Studios. Morrison also wrote the screenplay for that project though it seems to have died in development.

RZA’s directorial debut, The Man With The Iron Fists, is due on November 2.

Via Hollywood Reporter.

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 begin our four week “vacation” overseas with the most notable one-off comic films Europe has to offer.

Comic books are a uniquely American art form, but this doesn’t mean that they aren’t popular in other parts of the world. Europe and Asia have come to embrace the comic medium over the decades. As a matter of fact, they have been quicker to see the artistic merits of comic books than we here in the United States were. While Americans were considering comic books cheap entertainment for kids and emotionally stunted adults, people overseas were using the medium to expose on sexuality, politics and philosophy.

To cover every foreign comic book film would take up too many weeks in this here rundown, so we will be covering some of the films that have the most name value here in the States, either in their comic book form or in their film adaptation. This means that there will be a lot of great comic book films left out in these four weeks. And for that I apologize.

Our tour of Europe begins in Italy with one of the most influential Italian comic book heroes—Diabolik. Diabolik was created by sisters Angela and Luciana Giussani in the 1962 paperback graphic novel, Il Re del Terrore (“The King of Terror”). He is a highly-skilled thief who steals only from other criminals and is aided and abetted by his partner and lover Eva Kant. The character has influenced such comic writers as Mark Millar and Grant Morrison, who have created characters in their work influenced by Diabolik.

In 1968, Dino De Laurentiis brought Diabolik to the big screen in Danger: Diabolik.

Directed by Mario Brava and starring John Phillip Law in the lead, the film was a fairly faithful adaptation of the comic, with only the violence and adult themes toned down for the screen. The film detailed Diabolik going up against a crime boss who was upset about all the negative attention his organization was inadvertently getting from the police due to Diabolik’s actions.

Later that same year, De Laurentiis would bring another European comic book, this time a French one, to life on the big screen (with John Phillip Law along in a supporting role). The comic book was Barbarella.

Barbarella, like Diabolik, was created in 1962 by Jean-Claude Forest in a serialized form in the French periodical, V-Magazine and goes to show the difference in mentalities between American and French consumers.

That year saw the debut of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk in American comics, the white-bread Superman was topping the sales charts, and American comic books couldn’t have vampires or werewolves in fear of damaging vulnerable readers’ minds. Barbarella was a woman who travelled through space, getting herself into troubles where she had to use sex to get out or get into them. Nothing terribly graphic was shown, but when even the word “sex” would have gotten a comic book banned in the U.S., it shows you how far ahead of the curve Europe was.

The film was directed by Roger Vadim and starred his then-wife Jane Fonda as Barbarella. This is odd when you realize that the comic book Barbarella’s appearance was based on Vadim’s first wife, Brigitte Bardot. Dinners after a day’s filming must have been mighty interesting.

If nothing else, the campy film served as the inspiration for one of the best bands of the 1980s—Duran Duran. The band named itself after Durand Durand, a mad scientist played by Milo O’Shea in the film.

There have been several attempts to remake the film, including one by Vadim before he died with Sherilyn Fenn, then Drew Barrymore in the lead role. The most recent attempt was by director Robert Rodriguez, who was hoping the remake would be a star-vehicle for his then-girlfriend Rose McGowan. This version fell apart when Universal, the studio set to produce the film backed out over budget concerns and McGowan’s ability to carry the film. A German company was set to step in, but the thought of being away from his family made Rodriguez scrap the idea altogether. The pair would move on to another comic book adaptation, Red Sonja, with similar results.

Europe is also home to a large number of Muslim immigrants. Many of these immigrants escaped from Muslim countries when a new conservative religion-based regime takes over, but not all are welcomed fully in their new home countries, as they face the turmoil over whether to assimilate or stay true to their Muslim upbringing. One of these stories was Marjane Satrapi‘s, a story she related in the graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2.

Satrapi was a little girl around the time of the overthrow of the Shah in Iran, and she lived through the revolution that removed him from power and saw how that revolution had become co-opted by Muslim clerics. Eventually, at age 14, she is forced to leave Iran by her parents and relocate to Vienna, Austria. She finds a hard time adjusting to the Western world, struggling on what she should do—adapt to her new surroundings or stay true to her Iranian heritage. The graphic novels were made into a film in 2007 called Persepolis.

The film won a Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Film of 2007, losing out to Pixar’s Ratatouille. The film also garnered some controversy in Muslim countries, with Iran filing a formal grievance with the French government about the film’s inclusion in the Cannes festival.

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is proof that Hollywood can also screw up adapting foreign comics as well as homegrown ones.

Based on the incredibly popular Italian comic book, Dylan Dog, the film stars Brandon Routh, Peter Stormare, and Sam Huntington (thus reuniting Superman and Jimmy Olsen from 2006’s Superman Returns), the 2011 film adaptation doesn’t quite get it. The comic book was an existential satire on the world through the lens of horror.  The film is a typical action/horror film loaded with snark and obvious humor in place of the original’s subtlety and wit. The film was hardly advertised and died a quick death at the box office, making just over $4 million worldwide against a $20 million dollar budget.

Next time, we’ll travel a little farther East as we check out some comic book films from Japan, before we cover film series from both areas.

Here it is only Tuesday, and I think that this may be the best news story of the week short of George Lucas apologizing for the Star Wars “Special Editions” and announcing that he will make only the original theatrical cuts of the films available for the rest of time. Director Barry Sonnenfeld and comic book writer Grant Morrison are teaming up for Dominion: Dinosaurs Versus Aliens.

According to Deadline, the project will start as a graphic novel to be published by Liquid Comics later this year and then be turned into a feature film. Morrison is set to write both the comic and the film’s screenplay with Sonnenfeld set to produce and direct.

The story revolves around an invasion of prehistoric Earth by aliens who encounter resistance from dinosaurs showing a level of intelligence that modern science doesn’t suspect them having. Does this mean that the film will be entirely without dialogue? That would certainly be an interesting way to go, and one that makes me very hopeful that this all comes to pass.

I’ve a fan of Morrison’s writing for over two decades, ever since my college friend Eric shoved an early issue of his Doom Patrol run into my hands. Between his outrageous and absurdist take on the classic DC Comics characters and his humanist and deconstructionist take on Animal Man, I was hooked. Normally more of a DC, his run on Uncanny X-Men marked only one of two times that I actively followed a writer’s run on a Marvel mutant book. (The other was Joss Whedon.) As part of the British Writers Invasion of comics in the 1980s, Morrison has penned a number of groundbreaking works including the aforementioned titles as well as The Invisibles and All-Star Superman. And even when something he writes doesn’t quite succeed, it is still an interesting failure. Morrison hasn’t done much film work. He did write a screenplay adaptation of his comic miniseries We3 which was praised by anyone who had read it (myself included) but which never got any traction towards becoming a film.

The pairing of Morrison and Sonnenfeld is not one I would have necessarily made off the top of my head. Still, Sonnenfeld has his own quirky viewpoint and it should be interesting to see how the two mesh on this project.

Another day, another load of updates from SDCC. Some of them have actually been confirmed.

ITEM!: Nathan Fillion has been confirmed as Ant-Man! By Joss Whedon! For five minutes! But it was a joke! Ha-ha!

Personal note to Rich Johnston: I know that part and parcel of being a gossip columnist is that not everything you report pans out or is true. But when you  rush info onto your site before completely understanding the information, you might have people like my wife and I doing happy dances for no good reason. You owe me a beer, supposing that you ever remember who I am.

ITEM!: Whedon did confirm Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, which really wasn’t a secret. And apparently Marvel has finished the last minute race to cast Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner in time for tonight’s panel. We have more about these here.   

ITEM!: Marvel also displayed the helmets of Thor, Odin and Loki from their up coming Thor film.

Pretty snazzy. Not that far from the comic books (what, were you expecting the feathered skull cap from the early days of Thor?) and should look great on screen.

ITEM!: Comic writer Grant Morrison will be making the leap to the big screen. He has been tapped to pen Sinatoro, an indie film for ZDONK Productions.

Here is how the press release describes the film:

The film tells the story of Sinatoro, a man with no past and no memories; the sole survivor of a car crash in the middle of a desolate American desert road. When he encounters the beautiful daughter of a cult leader, she convinces him to help defeat the forces of evil, which have overrun her town. His journey pits him against the world’s most dangerous gangster and allies him with a deranged astronaut, a drunken cowboy, and an army of hobos. As Sinatoro travels through an American landscape made of pop culture nightmares, he struggles to understand who he is and why everyone is out to get him. 

Yeah, that sounds like Grant Morrison. Look for it if it ever comes to a theater near. If not, look for it on Netflix. In quasi-related, non-Comic Con news, Neil Gaiman announced on his blog that he has finished the first draft of the screenplay adaptation of his novel Anansi Boys. Morrison might be further along, but I’d imagine more people will see Gaiman’s.

ITEM!: Will Eisner’s classic A Contract With God has been optioned for a movie.

ITEM!: Sam Worthington has confirmed he is cast as Dan Dare for Warner Brothers.

ITEM!: There is what is being called a new “trailer” for the CGI animated comic adaptation, The Goon.

Personally, I think it’s more of a extended test shot than a trailer, but what do I know.

Join us tomorrow as we have news from today’s proceedings, including a look at the Destroyer from Thor, a look at the logo for the Green Lantern film, and what ever comes out of the Warner’s and Marvel panels.

At this point last summer, fans of comic book movies were buzzing over Marvel Studios’ slate of films. With both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk getting positive response from critics and ticket buyers alike, the studio announced plans to bring several more of Marvel Comics’ heroes to the big screen in a series of films that would culminate with them meeting up to form the superhero super group, The Avengers.

But fans of the heroes published by Marvel’s main rival, DC Comics, were wondering why their favorite characters weren’t making the transition to the big screen as well. True, the Batman film The Dark Knight would become the highest grossing film of the summer, but he was the lone character from the publisher’s 70-plus year history to find themselves on the silver screen. Despite pulling in over $391 million at the box office worldwide, the lackluster fan reaction to 2006’s Superman Returns had studio Warner Brothers floundering to find a new direction for a further cinematic adventure of DC’s most famous hero. The anticipated adaptation of the classic graphic novel Watchmen also failed to generate the expected excitement at the box office this past March. Meanwhile, film adaptations of Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash and Green Arrow continued to languish in development hell, with Warners reluctant to give the go-ahead to any of these projects.

But what a difference 12 months can make. Where there were none scheduled before, there are now several DC Comics characters with dates to appear in your local Cineplex, in addition to several television and direct-to-video projects. With the San Diego Comic Con getting underway today, we thought it would be a good time to roundup the state of the various DC Comics film projects that are being worked on.

The biggest news on DC Comics movie front is a recent Hollywood Reporter story which stated that last fall studio Warner Brothers quietly hired three of the comics publisher’s top writers – Marv Wolfman, Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison – to serve as creative consultants and writers for many of the films being produced under the Warners corporate umbrella. Johns, who worked as an assistant to Superman: The Movie director Richard Donner before moving on to becoming one of DC’s most critically and fan praised writers of the last several years, has already turned in a treatment for a film based on the speedster hero The Flash that screenwriter Dan Mazeau is currently fleshing out. While the Hollywood Reporter story doesn’t state it, Johns is also listed as a producer on an in development Metal Men flick which would feature a team of eccentric robots who battle weird science threats.

The Reporter piece doesn’t specifically state which films Wolfman and Morrison are working on, though a few educated guesses can be made. As Wolfman was the driving force behind a critically acclaimed run of The Teen Titans in the early 1980s, he is probably working with producer Akiva Goldsman, who is currently developing the property. Goldsman is also serving as producer for a possible Doom Patrol feature. As Morrison redefined the team in his classic run on the book in the late 80s/early 90s, he may be working with Goldsman on this.

As for the many other properties that have been optioned, their statuses break down as follows-

Batman sequel- Warner Brothers wants a new Batman film. The fans want a new Batman film. Christopher Nolan has indicated that he would like to make another Batman film. However, we’ll have to wait until Nolan completes his current project Inception, which started filming last week in the UK. But whatever Nolan cooks up for a third installment, it will almost invariably be worth the wait.

Superman sequel- As noted, Warners has not made any concrete steps in following the poorly received 2006 Superman Returns. Director Bryan Singer has promised that his plans would give a sequel film a tone similar to Star Trek II. However, Warners let Returns star Brandon Routh’s contract option lapse earlier this month, so it is a safe bet that they don’t want to go with Snyder again. But Warners will have to get a new film in gear soon. As part of a settlement between DC Comics and Warner Brothers and the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, the trademark to the character will revert from Warners back to Siegel’s and co-creator Joe Schuster’s heirs, where they could conceivably turn around and offer the character to another studio. If Warners is smart, they’ll put together an incredible Superman film and cut the families in on the profits in order to ensure that they want to continue working with the studio.

Jonah Hex- Josh Brolin stars as the titular scarred old West anti-hero. A former Confederate soldier, Hex roamed the western territories as a gun for hire, though being a comic book character, he has encountered foes a little outside of the western genre. In the film, Hex will face off against a voodoo practitioner played by John Malkovich who plans to help the South rise again with an army of zombies. Filming recently wrapped in Louisiana and now post-production is being done in anticipation of the film’s June 18, 2010 release.

The Losers- Principal photography kicked off today in Puerto Rico on this tale of a CIA black-ops team who were betrayed, left for dead and who are now looking to find out why. Watchmen’s Jeffrey Dean Morgan heads up the cast which includes Jason Patric and Zoe Saldana.

Green Lantern- Now that Ryan Reynolds has been cast as the power ring wielding Hal Jordon, expect more announcements leading up to the time when cameras are scheduled to roll next January in Australia. Casino Royale helmer Martin Campbell is directing this origin story showing how a fearless test pilot is recruited to join an elite corps of interstellar law enforcers.

Justice League: Mortal- Warners has backburned this super hero team-up film in favor of having many of the characters being established in their own films. Don’t expect to see this one in anything less than seven to eight years.

Green Arrow- Although the character’s appearance on the pre-Superman adventures of Clark Kent television series Smallville proved fairly popular, Warners has been slow in leveraging that in to getting the character to the big screen. Currently the studio is two different approaches they are considering. One is a more traditional origin story, while the other features an older version of the Emerald Archer who has been arrested and incarcerated in a prison full of his former foes entitled Supermax.

Wonder Woman- Producer Joel Silver has been working on bring the Amazonian Princess Diana to cineplexes for most of the past decade. Scripters like Joss Whedon and Laeta Kalogridis have come and gone from the project, with it getting no further along the production process. That lack of progress has never stopped rumors from sprouting up that such-and-such an actress as being considered for the title role. Newcomers Matthew Jennison and Brent Strickland are currently taking a crack at the screenplay.

Lobo- Another project that Silver has been developing is a cinematic adaptation of the wise-cracking alien bounty hunter, Lobo. Although the character exploded into popularity in the early 1990s due to a mix of social satire and extreme comedic violence, Silver told SciFiWire that a recently completed script, from an unnamed writer, is PG-13 in tone. But despite having a screenplay, the project still has no director attached or a greenlight from the studio.

Sgt. Rock- Silver had been trying to get a movie based on DC’s World War Two action comic off the ground for almost two decades now. At various points in time both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis were attached to star. Silver recently put the film on the backburner when director Quentin Tarantino, who was not tied to the Rock project, went off to make his own World War Two picture Inglorious Basterds. He may return to it sooner or later, though I would suspect sooner if Basterds does decent box office.

Billy Batson And The Legend Of Shazam- John August was the most recent writer to work on the project, but in January announced via his blog that he was off the project. There has been no news of a new writer having been hired.

Bizarro Superman- Galaxy Quest writing team Dean Parisot and Robert Gordon are currently developing a screenplay about the botched Superman clone who inadvertently acts as a villain. Given who is working on it, it looks as if it will be a more comedic take on the character, which is good, as Bizarro is one of the few DC characters where this approach could work.

Suicide Squad- The series about a group of supervillains being forced to undertake covert black ops for the United States government is currently being developed by Terminator Salvation producer Dan Lin. The script is from Street Fighter: The Legend Of Chun-Li scribe Justin Marks.

Aquaman- A film directed by none other than James Cameron adapting the underwater adventures of DC Comics’ Prince of Atlantis was a major plot point a few seasons back on HBO’s Entourage. Unfortunately, the current prospects for such an Aquaman film remain much dimmer. The character is currently being developed by Apian Way, actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company. Don’t expect any developments soon, though, as they are still looking for a writer.

Adam Strange- Warner is looking for a writer to bring the adventures of an archaeologist transported to an alien planet to be their champion to the silver screen.

Preacher- American Beauty helmer Sam Mendes is the latest director to have been signed to bring Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s controversial series to life. Ennis recently commented that he doubted a film could faithfully adapt the complex work, but screenwriter John August is giving it a try anyway.

Constantine 2- Producer Lauren Shuler Donner indicated last spring that the possibility of a sequel to the 2005 film starring Keanu Reeves as an urban mage fighting demons “Looks very good.” However, no writer has yet to be hired for the project.

Now granted, not all of these projects are going to make it to the big screen, but a reasonable percent age of them should, giving comics fans plenty to look forward to for the next several years.