DC Comics Movie Round-Up
DC President Paul Levitz provides an update on upcoming comics to film projects.
DC Comics President provided Superhero Hype this update on upcoming comics to film:
- Wonder Woman: "It's coming along. Supposedly, Joss [Whedon] is turning a script in any moment now. I can't emphasize enough how normal it is for these projects to take forever. The gap between signing the project for Superman 1 and the film coming out was six years. The gap between signing the contract that led to the first Tim Burton Batman movie was nine and a half years. The gap between the last, if you will, cycle of Batman films and Batman Begins was nine years I think. It's been about nine or 10 years since we got the Superman film rights back to Warner Brothers before we got this one going. An it's not just us. For whatever reason, Spider-Man was the worst mess we'd ever seen in terms of the business maneuvers it took to get it done. By their nature, these are big and complex things to put together. You don't build them fast."
- Watchmen: "Warners is looking at Watchmen right now. I believe they are looking for a director at the moment. I negotiated the Watchmen film deal when the third issue of the maxi-series was coming out in 1985 or 1986. It's been through Fox, Universal, Paramount so far and now it's at Warners. God knows. I think it's an extraordinary difficult property to do right as a film. It is a creative property that is very specifically designed for the medium in which it is published. I think it's a real challenge to break out and do it. I think they had a very interesting script and certainly Paul Greengrass is a great director, so I had some hope for the Paramount one. I hope Warner will be able to put something great around it."
- Aquaman TV series:"Yeah, we did a TV pilot, but it didn't get picked up. I think a lot of it was that it was started for the WB, and in the combination of the WB and UPN this year a number of slots got dropped radically, so I think it got hard to get anything on that year."
Levitz also offered: "There's a long list under development and announced things that are being worked on include: Flash with David Goyer writing, Shazam and Pete Segal is directing that for New Line. We have another Batman coming of course. New Line is developing some of our newer properties, Y the Last Man and The Exterminators, and Warner Brothers has a raft of other ones under the roof. A lot of stuff's going on."
And regarding the Batman sequel, he said: "It's going to be really good."