Jackman’s Wolverine gets director for a 2008 release

Source: Variety

I remember the first time I saw Hugh Jackman on screen in the first X-Men.

“Yeah,” I thought. “That’s definitely Wolverine.”

Jackman was so awesome in all three X-Men films that Twentieth Century Fox wanted to put him in his own spin-off movie (because it’s definitely cheaper than making another X-Men movie), and now the spin-off has a helmer.

South African writer/director Gavin Hood will be the man in charge of Wolverine’s plan. His 2005 film Tsotsi won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film and there’s already a lot of buzz surrounding his October 12 political thriller, Rendition, starring Reese Witherspoon, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, Alan Arkin and Peter Sarsgaard.

Jackman rocks, and I’ve no doubt that Hood will bring something different and innovative to the table.

My only complaint here is that it’s an origin movie, and I felt like we got just enough of Wolverine’s background in X-Men 2 to have an idea of where he came from while still keeping things mysterious.

Let’s take Hannibal Lecter as an example. I didn’t care for Hannibal Rising (despite Gaspard Ulliel’s fine performance as the young Lecter) because it lined out all these deep emotional and psychological reasons for why Hannibal does what he does. To me, Hannibal Lecter is infinitely scarier when he’s a charming, cultured, finely educated gentleman who wakes up one morning and decides he might like to eat people. Sometimes evil just happens, and that’s what made Hannibal so scary in The Silence of the Lambs.

Not that Wolverine is evil, of course. But you know what I mean. Rather than going back and trying to explicitly explain where Wolverine came from, I’d rather see a new adventure that’s something we’d otherwise never get to see in the context of the X-Men movies. There are lots of incredible comics about Wolverine fighting ninjas in Japan, for example, and I’d love to see the character placed in a fresh environment like that.

Oh, well.

Wolverine begins filming this November for a 2008 release, joining The Dark Knight, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk in what’s shaping up to be the best year for comic book movies ever.

Bring it!

And the Green Hornet is … Seth Rogen?

What what what? What what?

Whatever. I love it.

Seth Rogen, who was hilarious beyond all reason as Cal in The 40-Year-Old Virgin and proved himself a comedic leading man in this summer’s massively successful Knocked Up, is going to write and produce (with frequent writing/producing partner Evan Goldberg) and presumably/probably star in a big-screen adaptation of The Green Hornet — not to be confused with Green Lantern or Green Arrow from DC Comics — for Columbia Pictures.

First, some background.

The Green Hornet began as a radio show in 1936 — two years before Superman (and three years before Batman) first flew into the pages of DC Comics. By 1940, he had a comic book of his own.

Two movie serials appeared in 1940 and 1941, but the character got his widest exposure with the debut of a 1966 television series on ABC. Though it only ran one season, it bears the distinction of introducing a young martial artist named — wait for it, wait for it — Bruce Lee to American audiences.

Van Williams starred as Britt Reid, a newspaper publisher by day who fought crime as the Green Hornet at night. Bruce Lee played Kato, the devastatingly awesome kung fu master who posed by day as Reid’s valet. (Be sure to check out this guy’s article about the Green Hornet’s awesome crime-fighting car.)

Rogen is hilarious and smart with a lot of heart, and I really think he’ll do something fun with this.

And he’s not the first person to be attached to a Green Hornet movie. George Clooney and Jason Scott Lee (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story) were attached to play the Green Hornet and Kato in the early 1990s. (The Cloon would have rocked.) Director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep) and RoboCop writer Ed Neumeier also worked on an adaptation that never happened.

Kevin Smith wrote a screenplay in 2004 with the intention to film and release it by 2005 with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jet Li as the Hornet and Kato. It would have been ridiculously awesome, but unfortunately it never came to pass.

But that’s okay, because I trust Seth Rogen and I’m sure he’ll deliver something fun and exciting.

I can’t wait to see who he casts as Kato.

According to the Variety article, Rogen will be at San Diego’s Comic-Con International next week to talk about the movie.

More news as it happens.

Source: Variety

True Story

The Green Hornet was created by the same guys who created The Lone Ranger, and they actually set things up so that the Green Hornet is related to the Lone Ranger. The Lone Ranger had a nephew named Dan Reid, who later became Britt Reid’s father.

Update

According to The Los Angeles Times, Rogen wants Stephen Chow (Kung Fu Hustle) for Kato.

Scrantonicity is Dunder Movin’ …

… to my ever-growing “Well, that was a good idea but I can’t keep up with it and do it the justice it deserves” drawer.

Scrantonicity is, or was, as you know, my column dedicated to news about — and reviews of — NBC’s The Office, which is far and away the best thing on television right now and one of the best of all time.

Effective immediately, I’m handing my copy of the keys to Michael Scott’s drawer full of Dunder-Mifflin snow globes over to the good folks at Office Tally, who’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have and do it way better than I’d ever be able to do anyway.

But I still might sneak in a review from time to time.

That’s what she said.

That doesn’t even make any sense.