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Entries in Christopher Nolan (40)

Warner Bros., DC Comics Look to the Future of Superman and Batman

When it comes to comic book supremacy at the box office, it's still pretty clear that Marvel has done a better job manufacturing hits than has its rival, DC Comics. Even with the towering success of The Dark Knight, there have only been four DC films to ever gross over $200 million in the U.S., and two of those feature Batman and the Joker. Marvel, on the other hand, has four franchises that have posted a total of seven $200 million flicks since 1997, in the form of Spider-Man, X-Men, Men in Black, and Iron Man.

There has been some question for a while about what DC Comics will do moving forward; Superman Returns was not what everyone thought it could be, and that franchise may now be in for another retooling. Anne Thompson at Variety says that Warner Bros., which has enjoyed all of this Batman success, may want to similarly freshen up The Man of Steel. "Today I was told 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," reports Thompson. She also reveals that there are currently no writers attached to the project.

I'll say it now so I don't have to put up with a dozen comments later: What about Kevin Smith's script?

There. Happy?

Anyway, the point is Warner Bros. may want to take a mulligan on Superman, the same way Marvel did with The Hulk. Although you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that the New Coke version of the Hulk made a noticeably deeper impression with audiences.

Do you find it surprising that they can't figure out what to do with Superman? I don't.

I've been of the opinion since seeing the Bryan Singer flick that Superman is just not a contemporary hero. We don't like superhumans, or super-Kryptonians, or whatever the hell you want to call Clark Kent's alter-ego. We like 'em real, flawed, and dark these days. And Superman is not those things. His weakness is a rock. On the plus side, he can reverse the rotation of the planet. See? We don't respond as well to God in a cape as we used to.

Yes, there are dark corners in the DC canon for Superman to pursue, but will that please enough people? Maybe it's just best if DC bides its time with Superman and searches for another more complicated hero instead.

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Posted on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 12:46AM by Registered CommenterColin Boyd in , , , , , , | Comments7 Comments

Seriously, Brian Austin Green Wants To Be The Riddler

You can probably gauge an actor's level of heat by how their casting rumors are circulated, particularly for a movie like the follow-up to The Dark Knight. If you're Angelina Jolie and the rumor du jour is Catwoman, it's probably because Angelina is in the running for every role: Who wouldn't want her in their movie? The same goes for Johnny Depp playing The Riddler. There's zero evidence indicating any of that is true, and yet, because it would be a big role in a big movie, the chatter starts and it's hard to stop.

When your career resembles that of Brian Austin Green's, however, you have to start your own rumors. Yes, the former beau of Megan Fox and the one-time 90210 cast member told MTV this week his grand plan to crash the Batparty:

"I would love to be the Riddler,” says BAG boldly of the yet-to-be-determined next Batman movie. “I hope to God that they don’t try to replace Heath and have the Joker. And Two-Face is gone. So they need a new villain, and the Riddler makes sense,” Green reasoned.

OK...assuming we were intrigued by that possibility in the slightest, how would Green approach the role of the Batman villain? "That’s impossible to answer now,” Green said. “That would take years of preparation. It’s tough. Heath set the bar at a new level, which I think is fantastic for comic book lovers and movie lovers. He changed the face of what people expect out of those films.”

I've heard worst casting ideas - like yesterday's shot across the bow that Mike Myers may be in Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards - but I think I'd rather have Tori Spelling play the Riddler, honestly.

Posted on Friday, August 15, 2008 at 01:54PM by Registered CommenterColin Boyd in , , , , , | Comments9 Comments

Fantastic (And Phony) 'Dark Knight Returns' Poster

Let me start by saying that this is, as near as I can tell, 100% fake. I simply have no reason to believe it's real, despite the fact that it's an extremely well-made image. There are several reasons why I'm saying it's fake:

1) The website listed at the bottom isn't active.

2) We have zero confirmation that the villain in the poster will be the villain in the movie.

3) It's highly doubtful the movie in question would use the exact same motif for a new batch of posters.

4) Google it. You won't find much.

5) Chances are, the Zodiac Killer hasn't moved from the Bay Area to Gotham, so the cipher (middle left, upper right) is a questionable addition.

4) Isn't it a little early?

Now that we've established that this is almost certainly not real, let's just applaud the great Photoshop work involved.

Big Picture reader Nick Harper sent us this phony poster for The Dark Knight Returns, with a release date of 2011. As we've established in other articles on this subject, if anyone knows what villains will be used, his name is Christopher Nolan. Neither he nor any producers nor the studio have said who Batman will battle next. Does The Riddler make sense? I guess so. I personally want the series to avoid using him, The Penguin, and Catwoman altogether (and not just for this movie), but it's not illogical to think he might pop up in the third chapter.

If you look closely, you'll see that there's a planted story in the middle of the paper about Harvey Dent. Near as we can tell, that story has been written a year after Dent's death/disappearance, and we're positive that the byline credits a reporter named Vicki Vale. That's a lovely touch.

I don't know where in the hell this poster came from, but it's damn fine work. Again, I doubt they'd use the newspaper concept The Dark Knight employed, but if I were Warner Bros., I'd find out who made this poster, sue them for copyright infringement and then immediately hire them.

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Posted on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 11:32AM by Registered CommenterColin Boyd in , , , , , | Comments33 Comments

New 'Dark Knight' Book Shows Warped Joker Makeup Concepts

darkknightbook.jpgKudos to Peter at Slashfilm for flipping through the new book The Dark Knight: Featuring Production Art and Full Shooting Script and finding these early makeup concepts for The Joker.

I disagree with Peter that what we see in The Dark Knight is "a lot tamer" than these early depictions, particularly in the shot that looks like Elijah Wood went as the Joker for Halloween. The closely-cropped hair seems too managed, given what we know now. Also, Heath Ledger's clown makeup was so garish and always in such disarray, playing into the chaos of the character much more than what we see in these photos. The one in the suit looks more like that punk who got arrested for ripping down movie posters in a theater a couple weeks ago.

Still, it's interesting to see the progression, and apparently that famous Joker smile was in Christopher Nolan's mind all along. I wonder which version of The Joker's story he was using for his inspiration, the wife or the father?

One thing is clear throughout all of these pictures, culminating in the performance we saw in the film, and that's how Nolan always wanted to make the Joker more fearsome than comical. Mission accomplished.

You can pick up The Dark Knight: Featuring Production Art and Full Shooting Script at Amazon for about 25 bones.

Posted on Friday, August 8, 2008 at 05:38PM by Registered CommenterColin Boyd in , , , , , | Comments4 Comments

'Dark Knight' Passes $400 Million, We Crunch More Numbers

whysoserious2.jpg Slashfilm consulted Media By Numbers for the latest Dark Knight box office, and solely because we've covered every theatrical heartbeat of that film, we wanted to pass along that it has reportedly cleared $400 million, and has done so in nearly 30 days faster than the previous record.

In 18 days, The Dark Knight has done what it took Shrek 2 over 40 days to accomplish. The Media By Numbers estimate also gives a presumed Monday total of $6.3 million or so, good enough for a domestic gross of $400,031,000. Now, because it's an unofficial estimate and that number is so close to not being $400 million, there's as good a chance that today's box office will actually be the one that puts it over. Then again, that estimate might be a touch low, as well.

The point is: Less than three weeks versus six weeks and a day for Shrek 2.

We raised some peoples' ire last week with our math projecting where The Dark Knight would eventually end up. In case you missed it, we used a fairly standard 40% drop for every week Monday-Thursday and for the weekends we took the exact percentages from Pirates 2. That movie, like Dark Knight, zoomed out of the gates and set a opening weekend record, it opened in July, and it had a lot of competition. So its weekly performance seemed to be the best fit. And we took the numbers out 13 weeks, adding a little more pop on Labor Day and Halloween (when I think Warner Bros. would be wise to briefly expand the run of the film once again).

Even without the spikes on the holidays, using only the 40% drop per week and the Pirates box office numbers as our guides, we arrived at about $545 million. I don't believe it will continue to perform at this level for the next nine or ten weeks, though, so I personally don't even believe my own experiment. However, up to a point - and we'll choose Labor Day weekend as that point - the numbers should be fairly consistent with Pirates, within probably $10 million or so of our original projections.

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Posted on Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 12:08PM by Registered CommenterColin Boyd in , , , , , , , , | Comments20 Comments
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