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. Today, we examine why original superheroes are the best choice for film comedies.

If the Batman TV series taught us anything, adapting a comic book in a humorous way is a dicey prospect. Comic book fans still wince whenever that series is mentioned because it dared to make a joke out of Batman in particular and comic books in general. We comic book aficionados are pretty sensitive when it comes to people not taking the medium we consider sacrosanct seriously.  We don’t want Jack Black playing Green Lantern. We don’t want Bat Credit Cards. And while we don’t mind humor where humor is appropriate (see The Avengers), we don’t want Hollywood to create a comedy out of something that was never intended to be funny.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of tropes and trademarks in comic books that lend themselves to comedy or parody. That’s where original heroes come in. When filmmakers use original concepts to point out the humor inherent in comic book conventions, not many comic fans get up in arms. If the film is good or bad, a hit or a flop, it doesn’t mean one of their beloved comic book properties is affected in any way.  And the hit to flop ratio typically favors the flop side of the equation with a lot of these comedies.

1994’s Blankman was a parody that took skewered look at the science-based superhero origin. Like Batman, Blankman lost a loved one to violent crime (his grandmother). He, like Batman and also Iron Man, is a technical genius with a skill for building gadgets and gizmos. However, unlike those heroes, he is not a suave millionaire who lives in a mansion, but rather a socially inept appliance repairman who lives in a crime-riddled inner city neighborhood. He doesn’t have hi-tech Batarangs, he has a boot on a stick attached to some rope. He doesn’t have a computerized suit of armor, he has a robot sidekick named J-5 he jury-rigged out of an old washing machine.

While there is humor in the concept and one part of the ads did make me chuckle (the part where Blankman telling his brother/sidekick that he is certain J-5 will come rescue them, then quickly cuts to the awkward robot unsuccessfully negotiating a flight of stairs, sure to be reduced to a pile of gears at the landing below), I have to admit that I never saw this film. Damon Wayans, who co-wrote the movie with J. F. Lawton, plays Blankman in the manner of a more ribald Jerry Lewis. Blankman was more supergeek than superhero, and in the most annoying way possible.

The horrible ex-boy/girlfriend is a film staple, in both comedies and dramas. There is a lot of humor to be mined from a relationship gone wrong, a reminder of a mistake that you made or a messy break up that you repeatedly have to pay for.  But what if your ex was a superhero? What if the aftermath of your break up comes with collateral damage and if your jilted ex-girlfriend says she will kill you, it’s well within her power to do so.

That’s the concept behind 2006’s My Super Ex-Girlfriend. Luke Wilson plays Matt, a man who enters a relationship with a woman named Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) after rescuing her purse from a purse-snatcher.  It doesn’t take long before Matt realizes that dating the possessive, clingy and passive aggressive Jenny was a mistake, and he breaks up with her. Big mistake, as Jenny is a crimefighter named G-Girl who has Superman-esque powers, a quick temper, and little or no impulse control. Jenny soon decides to devote every second she is not saving the world to making Matt’s life a living hell.

Your enjoyment of this film would probably depend on how willing you were to overlook the fact that Thurman’s character is composed of the worst qualities of every bad girlfriend stereotype there is. Thurman does do her best to try to make a real human being out of the bundle of neuroses, insecurities, and rage, but even at 95 minutes it gets to be too much. Jenny is less a woman scorned and more a shrewish harridan, and the film would have been much better if she was the former.

Not that it mattered. The film doubled its budget in worldwide grosses, so it might have not been that big of a flop in the long run. Its mixed reaction from the critics didn’t keep people away, although it didn’t do quite as well as our next film, which overcame mixed reviews two years later to earn over $624 million dollars worldwide at the box office.

Hancock was once a dark and gritty look at a Superman-like hero who balances his obligation to protect humanity with giving in to his basest instincts—watching porn, alcohol, the whole nine yards. That was when it was called Tonight, He Comes and before it went through the development hell that left us with the neutered result that made it to theaters. In Vincent Ngo’s original script, Hancock was a character that made Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Bad Santa look like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life.  The original Hancock was a cop-killer and an attempted rapist, not the kind of character you’d expect Will Smith to play. As a matter of fact, it took even more creative editing to keep the watered down version from getting an R rating.

A miniscule amount of Ngo’s Hancock remains. The character is now a self-loathing, amnesiatic alcoholic whose superheroic deeds often come with multi-million dollar property damage. He is pretty much hated by the whole city of Los Angeles, and the city wants a word with him about all the damage he causes. A chance to improve his image comes when he saves the life of Ray (Jason Bateman), a public relations guru who offers work to improve his negative standing in the community as a sign of gratitude.

Being a comedy up to this point, logic dictates that the story should follow Hancock’s path to redemption.  Maybe a couple of positive PR opportunities Hancock screws up either through fate or his own arrogance. Perhaps a few dark secrets from Hancock’s past that Ray would have to deal with. But it would all lead to Hancock facing off against a threat that is a danger to his city and/or world, a threat he has no chance in overcoming, but he faces it anyway to save lives of the people that hate him. He is eventually victorious—at a cost—but ends up winning over the people who once hated him.

Predicatable, yes, and I am anything but a professional Hollywood screenwriter, but that would be better than what we actually received—a turgid 90 degree turn into melodrama.

Ray introduces Hancock to his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who, surprise, also has superpowers! Not only that, but comes from the same race of immortals that Hancock does! But wait, it gets better! It turns out that Mary is actually Hancock’s “wife.” Yes, she and Hancock are star-crossed lovers who must remain separate in order to save their lives. Because whenever they get near each other, they lose their invulnerability! That’s why Hancock has amnesia, because he was jumped by a racist in 1928 for daring to be seen in public by his white wife Mary (She left him so his powers would come back and he could heal. Although it seems he didn’t heal completely)!  Now, both of their lives are in danger!

I have no idea why Vince Gilligan, John August and whoever else reworked Ngo’s script tacked on this ending. Maybe they thought it would help humanize Hancock as a character. Or add a bit of social commentary into the mix. Or maybe they sincerely thought the new ending was great. They were wrong on all aspects. No plot points in the second half of the film are properly developed (especially the “becoming vulnerable while being close together” plot point. Don’t get me started on that one).  The second half has a tenuous connection to the first half of the film. So much so, that it’s like Hancock is two separate films awkwardly stitched together, with a garish piece of duct tape put over the seam to keep it together. Hancock could have been a better film, even if they didn’t follow Ngo’s original script to the letter. But as it stands, it is a disappointment. Well to me at least, it has done well enough to earn a sequel, that has been in the works for years.

Speaking of films that are stitched together from other films, let’s talk about Superhero Movie, a 2008 film that parodied the superhero genre.

The film uses Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man as the framework to hang their parody on. It focuses on Rick Riker (Drake Bell) who gains superpowers after being bitten by a genetically altered Dragonfly. He soon comes into conflict with Hourglass (Christopher McDonald), an industrialist who can siphon the life force from other humans to use to make himself stronger.

The film is a step above the typical modern-day parodies such as Meet the Spartans and Epic Movie (not that it’s a high bar to leap over) due to the involvement of Airplane’s David Zucker as a producer and the parody being based around an actual plot. But it pales in comparison to Zucker’s other parodies Airplane, Top Secret and Naked Gun.

If there is an “auteur” of the non-comic book superhero comedies, it is James Gunn. He has been involved in two films that employ a darkly comic look into the superhero archetype in a realistic setting, albeit in two very opposite ends of the spectrum.

In 2000, Gunn wrote The Specials, a film (directed by Superhero Movie’s Craig Mazin)which paints a more corporate world where superheroes are judged less by their abilities that their marketability.

In the film, the Specials are a lower tier super group. They get to fight the crappy villains, they get no movies made about them, and the only toy company who will make dolls of them doesn’t care enough about them to get their costumes, or even their genders, right. On the day their toy line is introduced, the team’s leader, The Strobe (Thomas Hayden Church) finds out his wife/teammate, Ms. Indestructable (Paget Brewster) is having an affair with the group’s most popular member, The Weevil (Rob Lowe). This causes the team to break up right on the cusp of their greatest (by default) achievement.

The film has a pretty good cast for its budget (@ $1 million). Gunn has a role in the film himself as The Strobe’s brother, Minute Man. The film had a brief life in the theaters before moving on to home video.

The Specials might be a cynical look at what the real world might really have to offer a superhero, but it was a cheery Saturday morning cartoon compared to Gunn’s 2010 film, Super, which Gunn wrote and directed.

Super is by far much darker than The Specials, as the black comedy is filled with a world people caught up in the spiral of drug addiction, female on male rape, and where deaths happen in a quick and gruesome fashion. If Gunn has one skill, it would be his ability to get great actors to work with him—at scale no less. This film features Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon, Liv Tyler, Michael Rooker and Nathan Fillion in its cast. That’s a line up any director would love to have, and the cast raises Gunn’s film to a higher level.

Gunn, of course, is set to direct Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. I am curious to see if Marvel lets him apply his cynical black humor to the property.

Finally, we have Defendor, a film similarly themed and similar in tone to Super.

The 2009 film is a twisted take on the Batman mythos (and also that of Rorschach of the Watchmen). When he was a kid, Arthur’s mother died after an extended period of drug abuse and prostitution. Arthur’s grandfather blamed his daughter’s death on the “captains of industry,” meaning that a society that favors the rich forced his economically poor daughter into her downward spiral. Young Arthur mistook his grandfather and thought he was saying one person, named Captain Industry, killed his mother. Arthur turned that a lifelong quest to bring his mother’s”killer” to justice through vigilantism.

Aided by a strong lead performance by Woody Harrelson, and with a underrated cast that featured Kat Dennings, Sandra Oh and Elias Koteas, the film did fairly well with critics. However, problems with U.S. distributor Sony caused the film to have only a limited theatrical release in the States.

Next, we finally get back into covering films actually adapted from comic books with a look at everyone’s favorite mutants.

Universal is trying to pump some new life into their attempt to bring D. F. Jones’s seminal science-fiction novel Colossus back to the big screen.

Currently the studio has Will Smith attached to the project. And while Solomon has worked with Smith before on Men In Black, looking over the writer’s resume I see nothing but comedy on his resume, including Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and 2000′s Charlie’s Angels. This concerns me as Jones’s original novel and its 1970 film adaptation were very much serious thrillers, without a trace of levity, which puts it far outside of Solomon’s normal wheelhouse.

A Cold War riff on the Frankenstein story, Jones’s novel featured a supercomputer that is designed by Smith’s character to control the country’s entire nuclear arsenal gaining sentience and slowly taking control of the country. Things get even worse when the computer detects the existence of its opposite number in the Soviet Union. The book was turned into a film in 1970 and director Joseph Sargent managed to capture an air of paranoia in the proceedings that made for a nice thriller. It also served as a forerunner to such films as War Games, Eagle Eye and a host of others.

It’s not known if this new version will retain the original novel’s time period or if it will be set in the modern day. With the all-pervasiveness of the internet these days, a modern setting could be quite effective for the story.

Previously, the studio had Law & Order: LA writer Blake Masters working on the screenplay for the project following up on the work of Jason Rothenberg. Reportedly, Rothenberg’s draft used elements of the two sequels that Jones wrote – The Fall of Colossus (1974) and Colossus and the Crab (1977). The Hollywood Reporter is saying that some material for the film will still be drawn from these two books.

If you were looking forward to seeing Will Smith kick ET’s butt again and this time in 3D, you’ll have to wait a bit longer. The 3D conversion of the 1996 alien invasion blockbuster Independence Day has been postponed from its July 3, 2013 to a date to be determined.

The special-effects fest from Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich was just one of a number of older films getting a 3D conversion for re-release.

There is no word yet from Twentieth Century Fox as to the reasons for the postponement, but it is possible that the conversion process is taking longer than anticipated and they would rather get it right then get it rushed.

In the meantime, Independence Day star Will Smith’s latest film, After Earth, opens on June 7 and director Roland Emmerich’s latest, White House Down, hits theaters a few weeks later on June 28th.

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.

Every now and then there comes a year when it seems that there are an inordinate number of really good films out in theaters. Is it the result of some sort of cultural zeitgeist or is it just mere coincidence? Who can say? But what can be known for sure is that the summer of 1982 was one of those magical movies times. On the 30th anniversary of that summer we will take a look back at some of the many movies that made that summer so memorable.

Annie wasn’t my first exposure to movie marketing tie-ins. After all, I was the kid who had every Star Wars action figure, vehicle, and play set that my parents could afford to buy me (not the Millennium Falcon, though. My parents couldn’t swing that. Every time I’m in a toy store and I see one for sale I want to buy it, thinking it would complete my childhood. But I digress…). But it the first film where I realized that Hollywood really wanted me to see it, and make as much money off me as possible in the process. I don’t know why I had this revelation with this film in particular. Maybe it was because the marketing tie-ins didn’t work on me (or for anyone else for that matter).

The film was loosely based on the at the time long-running (since 1977), Tony Award-winning musical of the same name  which was in turn loosely based on the long-running (since 1924) Little Orphan Annie comic strip. Directed by legendary director John Houston, the film told the story of a plucky orphan girl named Annie (Aileen Quinn) who lives at an orphanage run by the abusive and alcoholic Miss Hannigan (Carol Burnett). Annie’s luck begins to change when she is in Miss Hannigan’s office when Grace Farrell (Ann Reinking) comes to call. Farrell works for Oliver Warbucks (Albert Finney), a billionaire with an image problem. Warbucks has sent Farrell to the orphanage so she can bring an orphan home for a week to soften Warbuck’s hard-boiled image (I guess during the Great Depression, you could rent orphans on a weekly basis).

However, when Annie meets Warbucks. the orphan wheedles her way into the rich man’s heart. Warbucks soon decides he wants to keep Annie on a permanent basis, but before he can, he tries one last ditch effort to find Annie’s true parents. Enter a couple, Rooster (Tim Curry) and Lily (Bernadette Peters), who claim to be Annie’s birth parents. However, after they abscond with the child and the reward Warbucks was offering, the billionaire finds out that they are not what they seem and Warbucks must race against time to save Annie from the pair’s nefarious plans.

If you are thinking that was a great cast for the time, you’d be right. But it could have been better. Imagine Jack Nicholson as Warbucks, Steve Martin as Rooster, Bette Midler as Hannigan and Drew Barrymore as Annie. All either auditioned or were the first pick for the above roles.

Columbia Pictures paid $9.5 million for the rights, and the total budget for the film was $50 million (including $1 million for a lush musical number that was shot, never used, and shot a different way for the film). So, there was great interest in trying to have the film earn its money back.  Hence, the powerful push towards marketing.

My first experience with the marketing for this movie came from world of comic books. I was just beginning the transition from casual comic book buyer to collector, and I was just learning about the art form and deciding what titles I wanted to collect.

Comic books based on the Annie film were all over newsstands at this time. First, appearing on spinner racks in May of 1982, was Marvel Super Special #23, which featured an adaptation of the film by Tom DeFalco and Win Mortimer. Next, Marvel broke up that adaptation into a two-issue miniseries that arrived in stores in July and August of 1982. The story was once again collected into one volume with an oversized treasury edition that arrived at newsstands on September of 1982.

The 11-year-old version of me thought this was overkill. I mean, who’d want one comic book about a cootie-filled girl movie, let alone three? After all, this was Marvel Comics we are talking about here. It was the home of the X-Men, the Hulk and Spider-Man. But deep down, I began to understand the logic of the comic book release schedule.

The adaptation released in May was to whet my appetite for the film. The comic issues released in July and August were there to attract people who, presumably, loved the film and couldn’t wait to see it adapted into another medium. And the treasury edition was there for anyone who missed any of the other volumes or, perhaps, to act as a supplemental gift for any Annie fan who might want something tangible to put in their Christmas stocking (as the VHS tape of the film wouldn’t be released until April of 1983).

In other words, the comics were there to promote the film, and also provide an additional source of income for it. What’s more, that source of income was meant to come from my pocket, even though I had not the slightest interest in the film, the comic books or any of the other tie-ins. This is a pretty heavy realization for a 11-year-old to be hit with.

Of course, the comics weren’t the only tie-in to go along with the movie. There was also the soundtrack album and novelization. There was the commemorative glass with the image of Annie on it you could have picked up at Swensen’s restaurant. There were stuffed dolls, plastic dolls and action figures. There were activity books and coloring books. Just about anything that they could have put Annie on, they put Annie on.

Of course, this was nothing new. Annie was far from the first film to go this heavy into marketing, and it surely wasn’t the last.  But I never noticed the connection before this film. I guess in my childhood naivete, I though Kenner was just doing kids a favor by putting out little plastic replicas of our favorite Star Wars‘ characters.

There is one difference between the toy and fast food restaurant tie-ins for Annie and other films–the marketing for other films seemed to work better. Annie only made $57 million at the box office, which was deemed a disappointment at the time. While the musical itself is popular enough that regional theaters still put it up today, a revival is in the works on Broadway for later this year, and it was adapted again for television in the 1990s, the first film adaptation resides in the realm of a cult status. Sure, people plan parties around it to this day,  and Will Smith is looking to remake it as a vehicle for his daughter Willow (God help us), it wasn’t a blockbuster the size of Star Wars, either in cultural influence or box office receipts.  But it sure did leave a lasting impression in my mind.

1. Men In Black III (Sony/Columbia, 4,248 Theaters, 103 Minutes, rated PG-13): Here’s something you don’t see every day, a sequel ten years in the making yet one that was rushed into production without a completed script. Don’t know what to make of that or what that says about the final product.

The boys are back as Agent J (Will Smith) comes to work and finds that his partner, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has called in sick. For 40 years. With the excuse of death. It appears that one of the aliens K busted went back in time and killed him. Now, J has to go further back in time to meet up with a young Agent K (Josh Brolin) to solve the mystery and save K’s life.

The story does have potential. But do we really trust a time travel story that was still being written when production began?

2. Chernobyl Diaries (Warner Brothers, 2,433 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated R): The best horror movies have a sense of reality to them and play on real life fears.

While for you and I, vacationing in a nuclear wasteland might be the furtherest thing from our minds. But you know there are a bunch of people who like to push boundaries and have “extreme” experiences that would totally be into that. And while these people seldom think too hard about the consequences, those consequences are never similar to what is played out here.

The film focuses on two couples who vacation on the outskirts of Russia’s worst nuclear disaster. While there, they are attacked by a bunch of mutants. I wonder if any of these mutants will have metal claws or be able to shoot lasers from their eyes?

I’m rooting for M. Night Shyamalan, I really am.

I know that it is currently hip to crap on the guy for his last couple of films. But you have to admit that the films that made him a household name in non-film geek homes – The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable and Signs – are all stellar films and I think that he still has it in him to create works of tat caliber again.

(And before we go any further, if you point out the whole “aliens and water” thing from Signs as a reason it was bad, you are missing the whole point of the story.)

Could Shyamalan’s next film, the futuristic action flick One Thousand A.E., be his shot at cinematic redemption? Possibly. It will be the first film that he has directed where he will not be the sole screenwriter. The original writer on the project is Gary Whitta, who gave us last year’s The Book Of Eli. Granted, Shyamalan did his own rewrite on it’s story of a father and son who crash land their spaceship on Earth a thousand years after it is had been deserted by humanity for new homes amongst the stars. But now it is being reported that Stephen Gaghan has just turned in a polish of that draft to Sony Pictures. With winning an Academy Award for Traffic and getting an Oscar nomination for Syriana to his credit, Gaghan is no slouch in the writing department.

I think at this stage of the game we can be safely optimistic about this film. But even if it turns out good, the studio may still have a problem selling the movie to a public for whom Shyamalan’s name has come to mean something far different than it used to.

Will and Jaden Smith are set to star in the film which Sony has scheduled for a July 2013 release.

Via Variety.

Sony Pictures seems to be moving forward on finally getting some sequels to the 1996 hit alien invasion flick Independence Day made. Reportedly the film’s original producer and director team of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin are close to finishing off scripts for a Part 2 and 3 and the studio is looking to go ahead with the films, with or without star Will Smith.

Vulture is reporting that while the loglines for the two scripts are being kept secret, they are two separate stories that while they can be watched independently of each other, still make up one bigger story. Emmerich and Devlin are expected to turn in their drafts to the studio sometime in December.

Sony is also looking to shoot the films back-to-back as a way of saving a few bucks on what is sure to be a rather expensive project.

Another way the studio might be looking to save some money is by going ahead with the films without Will Smith’s involvement. Reportedly the studio had approached the actor back in 2009 with the possibility of making two Independence Day sequels and the actor requested a $50 million paycheck. Given that Smith’s last two films were 2008’s less than successful Hancock and Seven Pounds, it’s possible that actor’s quote has dropped somewhat. But then again, the first Independence Day was the film that catapulted Smith’s movie career into the stratosphere, so he may think that he is entitled to a hefty payday.

Director Shawn Levy may walk off the James Cameron-produced remake of Fantastic Voyage if studio Twentieth Century Fox doesn’t allow him to cast a major star as the film’s lead.

The Hollywood Reporter has put together a story that states that the director has begun to look at possibly moving on to other projects if Fox doesn’t relent on their reticence for casting a big star, with a big salary, to headline the film’s cast. The film is already looking to be fairly expensive due to the heavy amount of CGI needed to realize its story of a submarine being shrunk to microscopic size and injected into a dying scientist to save his life.

Of course, there is one star who Fox feels could be a big enough draw to justify their large salary quote and that is Will Smith. And by good fortune Levy is supposed to meet with him in a couple of weeks about the film. But sources are saying that if Smith doesn’t sign on for the film Levy may very well walk.

For his part, Smith already has a few projects that he’s looking at, including one with M. Night Shyamalan that he will star in with his son Jayden.

If Levy walks, Fox will be back to square one in trying to attract a director. Levy also wouldn’t be the first director to have left this project. Paul Greengrass and Louis Letterier were also set to helm the film but dropped out.

At this point, the Men In Black III seems to have been in production longer than a Stanley Kubrick film. We’ve been through the problems before and we continue to hope that the wait will be worth it.

While we wait though, Movieweb has managed to score a half-dozen on-location set photos of stars Will Smith and Josh Brolin as the two MIB agents trying to save Earth in 1969 from… something. We also get a glimpse of a couple of mysterious, high-tech shinny things. We’ve picked out two photos from the set below, but head over to see all six.

So what are those shiny pod things? Who knows. We’ll, find out next summer when the film is released.