Superman Reboot "Confirmed"
redhawk
Warner Bros. has confirmed long-running rumors that it will reboot the
Superman movie franchise.
Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros. Pictures Group President, tells The Wall
Street Journal that the Man of Steel will be reintroduced on the big
screen without regard to 2006’s Superman Returns.
“Superman didn’t quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it
to,” Robinov says. “It didn’t position the character the way he needed
to be positioned. ... Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a
movie for Christmas of this year or 2009.”
There’s no mention whether Superman Returns director Bryan Singer will
be part of the reboot. Earlier this week, Variety’s Anne Thompson
reported “that it is a priority at the studio to find the right
direction and if Bryan Singer is willing to do that, fine, but if he
gets in the way, he may not stay on the project.”
Benjamin Pavsner
"redhawk" <newfou...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:19cddc51-1e71-4279...@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
http://www.newsarama.com/film/080822-WBRebootSuperman.html
Superman Returns didn't work in so many ways I don't know where to start,
but I'll darn tootin try:
1. Firstly, WB should have done a reboot from the start. In retrospect, look
how well rebooting has done to other movies. "Casino Royal" was a monster
hit and Nolan's Batuniverse ain't hurting either. SR was set in the same
"universe" as the Reeve's movies, a franchise started 30 YEARS AGO!!!!
2. Did anybody really buy the casting? Chris Reeve LOOKED the part (George
Reeves did too, for that matter). I would have preffered Tom Welling to
Routh. Kate Bosworth was wimpy and uninspiring and Kevin Spacey just really
went through the motions.
KalElFan
news:19cddc51-1e71-4279...@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
> http://www.newsarama.com/film/080822-WBRebootSuperman.html
>
> Warner Bros. has confirmed long-running rumors that it will reboot the
> Superman movie franchise.
This and the other web site reports are based on yet another in a
stream of "Things Are Happening With Our DC Movie Series"
articles and blogs. It's The Wall Street Journal this time:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936107614461929.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
As is typical, the reports are also making stuff up that isn't in the
article. Nothing is confirmed in it, let alone a Superman reboot.
It's all still vaporware, as most of it's perpetually been for the
past 20+ years now. Other than the Batman movies, Superman
Returns was it. Let's be kind and forget Steel and Catwoman.
Same with "darker Superman". First off, it doesn't get that much
fraking darker than Lex metaphorically crucifying Superman and
beating him to a pulp and then death. So when we see this in a
Robinov quote towards the end of the WSJ article:
"We're going to try to go dark to the extent that the characters
allow it."
The response in Superman's case is "Too Late!" Singer "beat"
you to it! He also overshot the mark on the "brooding" scale,
what with the long absence from Earth and the soap opera
romance angst by the time he got back.
Poor Jeff "If McG had got on the plane to Australia..." Robinov.
He seems to get the worst of it in these articles and the resulting
"Interpretation Creep" of those in cyberspace. Either that or the
What Should We Do Now Dart Board really exists and is in
his office. The randomness of the conflicting reports on this
the last week or so is notable. It's been like a competition
to spin what's going on, when basically nothing is going on
but the spinning of what's going on.
It may not be fair though, because again when you actually look
at what he said it's as vague as it gets. They're going to "try" to
go "dark" but "to the extent that the characters allow it". It
sounds like their dart board's version of the magic 8 ball, or a
fortune cookie's advice perhaps. Maybe Jeff had Chinese for
lunch that day, went back to the office and threw the dart, and
then gave an interview that's based on a cross of the results
between the two. If you don't like it, "Ask Again Tomorrow",
says the Warners Magic 8 Ball in Horn's office.
KalElFan
news:DTTrk.14642$rD2....@bignews4.bellsouth.net...
> ... look how well rebooting has done to other movies. "Casino Royal"
> was a monster hit...
No, it wasn't. Especially adjusted for inflation, its numbers were typical
of Bond movies, which is to say good but not great. All the "greatness"
of Bond box office is cumulative, i.e., based on the series' longevity.
> ... and Nolan's Batuniverse ain't hurting either.
Batman Begins had good but not great box office, after a break of about
six years from the sputtering end of the series that Burton's Batman started
about 20 years prior. Here they'd be rebooting a movie that reintroduced
Superman ("Superman Returns!") less than five years prior. As for the
latest Batman sequel, there were unique circumstances surrounding that
and using those to justify "dark and brooding" for Superman will come
back to bite them.
Here's a key fallacy some cite:
> SR was set in the same "universe" as the Reeve's movies, a franchise
> started 30 YEARS AGO!!!!
It's not at all clear the movie is literally set in the same universe, in
fact it almost certainly isn't. It was said to be a "sequel in spirit" to
Superman II. But the idea that that was its main problem, or that
its story and tone were true to the spirit of those first two Reeve
movies, and what made those successful and still popular and
beloved today, is bogus.
Singer didn't need to pay vague homage to the first Reeve movie,
in lingering scenes and shots that tended to bore, while he nuked
the core of Superman's character and the romance with his story.
He should have done the reverse. Pay homage to Superman with
a story that enhanced the character and romance, amidst an action-
packed story with a kick-ass villain that was so good it could be
described as nuking us all with thrills and excitement. He can still
do that in an SR sequel, if he accepts the need for a "reboot in
spirit" that corrects some very specific problems with SR.
Blaming the concept of paying some homage to the most beloved
Superman movies, and even to the best actor to play the roll when
they cast Routh in part because of his resemblance to him, is just
false conventional wisdom pabulum. That not only had virtually no
negative impact at all, it arguably is the one thing that makes SR a
sympathetic movie with actors who tried their best.
> 2. Did anybody really buy the casting?
With the right script, the cast can be a big comeback story. It
wouldn't have mattered who was cast in SR, all of its main flaws
were still in the story and script itself.
redhawk
> "redhawk" <newfounds...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:19cddc51-1e71-4279...@v13g2000pro.googlegroups.com...
>
> >http://www.newsarama.com/film/080822-WBRebootSuperman.html
>
> > Warner Bros. has confirmed long-running rumors that it will reboot the
> > Superman movie franchise.
>
> This and the other web site reports are based on yet another in a
> stream of "Things Are Happening With Our DC Movie Series"
> articles and blogs. It's The Wall Street Journal this time:
>
LOL, by next week we may be hearing that Warners is fully committed to
"The Man of Steel: Brainiac's Revenge" and that all discussion of a
reboot was "just hypothetical... sometimes Jeff Robinov likes to have
fun with journalists." Principal photography starts in September, but
only if Bryan Singer will get on that plane to Madagascar. ;-)
KalElFan
> LOL, by next week we may be hearing that Warners is fully committed
> to "The Man of Steel: Brainiac's Revenge" ...
Just "Brainiac's Revenge". :-) The Revenge word evokes the dark that
Robinov is looking for! 20+ years ago it was too dark for Star Wars
and they went with Return of the Jedi. Even less reason to worry in
this case because it's alluding to the villain and not the hero or heroes.
Back to the article though...
> ... and that all discussion of a reboot was "just hypothetical... some-
> times Jeff Robinov likes to have fun with journalists." ...
It's the Wall Street Journal, which major shareholders read, and the
question about the Batman vs. Superman project reflected how out
of the loop the reporter and their readership probably is, on average.
Nobody's been asking about that one for years now.
The "without regard to Superman and Batman" part was I'm pretty
sure dealing with the reporter's Batman vs. Superman question.
Then later he used "reintroduce" rather than "reboot", and I
thing that's intentionally vague. On the face of it I agree it does
evoke the possibility of a complete reboot. But would that come
as news to Routh, for example? His recent interviews seemed
to be talking about Singer working on it and it still being at least
a possibility. If there's a pure reboot, I think it's almost certain
that it has to be recast. We'll probably soon have the prospect
of Routh and other cast members telling us what they really think
about that, and perhaps how they learned about it in a Wall
Street Journal article. More great PR for Warners as they fight
Fox on Watchmen, and the Siegel and Shuster estates, and delay
the Potter sequel, and announce DC hero movie vaporware.
We're not getting anything in 2009 because it's too late for that
(Watchmen aside, assuming the FOX lawsuit doesn't hold that
up -- it's not a DC hero movie). Maybe we get Batman in 2010,
and Wonder Woman and either Green Lantern or Flash in 2011.
Maybe they even give us "planned" release dates within a month
when they make the formal announcement, just to make it sound
like it's more than just vaporware. But except for another Batman
sequel, it's probably just as likely any one of the other projects is
still in development hell three years from now, as it is any actually
meets a target release date.
I thing the sequel that fixes SR actually has much better upside
potential. The reboot with new actors will invite skepticism,
and the risk is greater because if it fails then DC's given up on
a series that could have continued, in favor of an even worse
botched attempt. Its credibility is shot even more with other
hero movies, and there's no realistic possibility or market for
trying to reboot Superman in the movies a third time within a
decade.
Michael S. Schiffer made an anecdotal post on racdcu about
some decent interest among a few non-core viewers of SR on
DVD. This is close to the impression I have about how most
ordinary viewers see it. The movie isn't nitpicked or strongly
criticized by the wider movie-viewing population the way it
was by the core base (at least the unbiased core base --
shilling and the like was rampant at the time). This is not to
say that the problems with SR are excusable, or that the
core base that's developed a consensus on those doesn't
have a point. But I think it's all the more reason to not be
hasty in abandoning a sequel.
Fix the problems as part of it, and deliver a better movie,
and I think there'd be very favorable market reaction that
wouldn't have to rely on a lot of artificial hype and shilling.
Genuinely good anticipation and buzz, and then good word
of mouth would take hold, and a doubling of the box office
numbers would be within reach as it was with the Batman
Begins followup. The series would be setup for a few
more sequels, and SR and Warners' entire Superman
catalog also increases in value.
Benjamin Pavsner
"KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote in message
news:6hebu1F...@mid.individual.net...
1. Not sure if "REVENGE of the Jedi" was in itself to dark, it was more like
"Revenge isn't really a Jedi concept," which is why "Revenge of the SITH"
worked because, well, they're Sith.
2. With Batman vs. Superman (or whatever): in all the live action stuff
over, say, the past half century, when has a hero in a DC Universe set live
action adaptation acknowledged another hero? Like in "Superman Returns:"
Supes is gone for five years and all goes to Hell. Er, can't Captain Marvel
or one of the Green Lanterns pick up some slack? Or Supergirl? Never ever
mentioned that they EXIST! In most the live action stuff, Batman refers to
Superman ONCE in "Batman and Robin." That's it.
KalElFan
Agreed, but I think that the two ways of looking at it are related.
Part of it is that the villain(s) can seek revenge, so the title works
that way in either the Star Wars or Superman cases. The hero(es)
cannot seek revenge (to the extent there's a rule here).
But the double standard is also related to the "darkness" factor.
It may not be a direct 1:1 correlation, but when people recoil
at the thought of murderous Superman played by Sean Penn,
it's because it's sending Superman, as a character, in an overly
dark direction and violating that same sort of rule that a "no
revenge" one gets to. Though I didn't read it, I gather there
was some considerable controversy over that Byrne or pocket
universe story where Superman used Gold Kryptonite on the
villains and then killed them. Did Superman kill the Joker in
Kingdom Come, out of revenge? I can't recall, but that'd
be one of the exceptional cases where a story could get away
with it. As a general rule, I don't think the market wants to
have Superman taking revenge or being a vigilante or the like.
That'd be taking the character and story too dark.
> 2. With Batman vs. Superman (or whatever): in all the live
> action stuff over, say, the past half century, when has a
> hero in a DC Universe set live action adaptation acknowledged
> another hero?
I can't recall a substantive crossover of any kind, just maybe a
line but even Spider-Man had that one about Superman. I
think the problem with crossovers in live action is that it tends
to establish the stories are set in the same universe. When it's
a comic book that costs little to make by comparison, they
tend to go hog wild with it. But if Routh were to show up in
the next Batman sequel, playing Superman, it'd kind of wrench
people out of the Batman universe and get them thinking about
Superman Returns. That's not a good thing for Batman at this
point. I think Warners, when investing hundreds of millions, is
better off keeping each hero in separate universes with at most
a line or quip. Viewers don't jump to conclusions that way
about any particular version of a hero being the one that's
being referred to.
When they get to the stage of a JLA movie or TV series, the
best default approach would be to start fresh, recasting across
the board and not making it a spinoff of any single-hero story.
But other options might be worth looking at in that case. If
they ran a successful Supergirl TV series for 7 years (a reboot
and not spinoff of Smallville), then by the end of it maybe it'd
make sense to base an Early JLA series around whoever may
have been cast in that series as Clark and any of the other
heroes. Smallville could have led to that, but I think it's just
weakened far too much and the rebooted Supergirl is what
has the best potential.
nathonn
Hi,
The superman return is nice movie, specially i like the
first aeroplane scene.