Sin City 2, Hellboy 2 and more

Just when Miller thinks he's escaped Hollywood - they pullllll him back in.

Director Robert Rodriguez (Spy Kids) is set to begin production on a sequel to his stylistic cinematic hit Sin City, co-directed by Frank Miller, in about six months. The film should start production after Rodriguez completes is section of Grind House, a film composed of two 75 minute horror movies by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Previous rumors have suggested that the sequel might also be a prequel at the same time: the sequel might be a mixture of an adaptation of Frank Miller's A Dame To Kill For and original material by Miller written specifically for the film. Will we see Marv, that murderous but loveably confused hulk, before his electrocution? Previous reports also suggested that Rodriguez is holding out to cast Angelina Jolie in a leading role. Anything is possible in Sin City.

MERCY REEF / AQUAMAN:

The CW network's recent attempt to put a hip and youthful spin on a decidedly unhip and out-of-date comic book is floundering like a fish out of water. Originally titled Mercy Reef/Aquaman (the title appears to be undecided), the show was supposed to air in the aall, introducing audiences to young beach hunk Arthur Curry (Justin Hartley), the owner of a dive shop who is actually the lost prince of Atlantis. Besides a royal pedigree, he also possesses the ability to breathe under water, swim really fast, and communicate with sea life. This latest attempt at youthenization of a comic book character in the tradition of Smallville co-stars Lou Diamond Philips and Ving Rhames. In fact it was produced and written by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and directed by Greg Beeman, all of whom were involved with Smallville. To many fans' surprise, when the CW network announced their Fall 2006 schedule, Aquaman was nowhere to be found.

Is the show still going to air? Perhaps in midseason? Has the project been cancelled? No one seems to know. There is a chance Aquaman may end up banished to that terrible limbo where unaired superhero pilots and films go to die but are constantly resurrected on bootleg DVDS and tapes at conventions like the upcoming Comic-Con in San Diego.

Some people were given a chance to screen the pilot. A blogger identified as "Jace" posted a negative review of the pilot perhaps indicating some of the reasons why the show has not yet been scheduled to air. On the other hand, Kryptosite posted generally positive bloggage.

HELLBOY 2:

More sequel news. The follow-up to Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Mike Mignola's comic Hellboy (a film I love and will get the spot-light treatment in this column soon enough) has moved from Sony to Paramount Studios. In an article by If Magazine del Toro confirms, "We're moving studios right now.... They don't have a deal with Sony any more and we are looking for financing for HELLBOY 2. It's at Paramount right now. It's bigger in scale, but not necessarily in budget. Abe Sapien has a much bigger part, and we're keeping closer to the mythology of the comics." As long as del Toro can bring his love and energy back to the character with the same terrific cast, I don't care what studio pumps it out.

If you too are a fan of the movie adaptation of Hellboy, you'll be happy to learn that the film has spawned its own adaptations? Cartoons! Two upcoming straight-to-DVD animated films - Sword of Storms and The Golden Army - are currently in production and due out next year. The animated films take the movie as a starting point, but also draw heavily on the comic book stories, so the animated films won't exactly be sequels. Tad Stones, the supervising director of the project, has set up a blog full of story details, sneak peeks at production photos and images, as well as in-depth information about the animation and artistic process. Several actors from the live-action film cast, including Ron Perlman and John Hurt, will lend their voices to the project.

PREACHER:

Aint It Cool posted an unsubstantiated rumor from a source who suggested that HBO has expressed interest in adapting Garth Ennis' comic book PREACHER into a TV series. Don't tell me you've never heard of Preacher! DC Comics published Preacher, written throughout by Garth Ennis, between January 1995 and August 2000 under their Vertigo publication label. Preacher follows the story of Jesse Custer, a disillusioned Christian minister from Texas, who merges with a divine supernatural force that gives him divine powers to rival that of God's. Believing that God has neglected the world and is the source of all humanity's misery, Jesse and his friends (his assassin girlfriend and an Irish vampire) seek to find God and make Him accountable to justice. Jesse's quest and his philosophy of justice are dominated by the genre conventions of American Western fiction in film and on television, specifically John Wayne films such as True Grit and Tall in the Saddle
- but the road-trip story is also a wild, violent, offensive romp full of gallows humor a mixture of almost every popular American genre of entertainment you can think of. The entire run of Preacher's 66 regular issues and nine special issues has been subsequently collected in nine trade paperback volumes. Because of the provocative and controversial themes, the series continues to be incredibly popular, evoking thought and response from both the comic book industry and the field of popular culture studies.

If you think Christians were mad at The Davinci Code, just wait until they get a load of some of the things Preacher has to say about religion (such as the possibility that Jesus not only had descendents, but a secret organization has been inbreeding these descendents for centuries to keep the blood line, uh... "pure"). Comic's creator Mark Miller got in contact with Garth Ennis and was told that the property is "very much up
for grabs," although Ennis says he knows very little about any interest from HBO.

NEXT WEEK: In the late 1990s, Oliver Stone's production company was prepared to make a film adapted from a comic about a robotic assassin...a robotic assassin, purchased from a vending machine and programmed to self-destruct upon the death of its target. The robot becomes aware of this fact and, after putting its target out of commission and taking it to a hospital to be kept on expensive life support, the robot must become
a freelance mercenary and assassin to pay for the medical bills that guarantee their mutual survival. Intrigued? Too weird to be true? Come back next week as I turn the spotlight on one of the greatest break-out comic books that was never made into a film, Rob Schrab's Scud: The Disposable Assassin.

See you at the movies, and hopefully if I can convince you, also at the comic
shop!