The Mix : What are people talking about today?

Dark Horse Ark Movie

Dark Horse Ark Movie

Columbia Pictures plans to produce a film based on Mark Verheiden’s story, The Ark.  The producers are Neal Moritz and Mike Richardson.  Verheiden will adapt his story.

Moritz is already working on The Green Hornet and Evan Almighty.

Verheiden and Richardson, you’ll recall, did Timecop as a comic, a movie and a TV show.  They also worked on The Mask. Mark’s the current writer on Superman/Batman, is an executive producer on Battlestar Galactica, finishing work on the new Bruce Campbell biopic, and a long-time comics fan.

Now – Classics from the UK

Now – Classics from the UK

Remember how last Sunday I was lamenting the lack of comics based on classical literature by, say, "Virginia Woolf or a Bronte or two?"  Well, via Down the Tubes comes news of a new UK-based company starting up to tackle even more classic literature in a graphic format.

Classical Comics hopes to have its first titles up and running by next year, and lookie here (at right), Jane Eyre will be one of them!  (Not only that, but it will be adapted by Amy Cozine — great to see more women writers turning to comics!)

CC’s first adaptation, of Shakespeare’s Henry V, should be out this October.  Forbidden Planet International  has some sample pages.  Also planned are adaptations of Macb— er, The Scottish Play, as well as Dickens’ Great Expectations.  Which definitely describes my hopes for this company.  The more ways we can reintroduce cool books by dead writers to new readers, the more we can immortalize their wonderful prose.

Spider-Man 3 breaks more records

Spider-Man 3 breaks more records

Variety reports today that Spider-Man 3 set opening day records in 10 of the 16 markets in which it opened yesterday.   In Italy, for example, it earned $4 million, beating the previous record of $2.5 million, held by The DaVinci Code.  Sony invested $3.3 million in marketing there.

In France, SM3 earned $6.8 million, ahead of Star Wars: Episode III.  In terms of ticket sales, that’s 175,334 for Spidey, 124,664 for the Sith.

Records were also set in Germany, Belgium and Egypt.

I’m figuring if I go Monday, I might be able to get a seat.

JOHN OSTRANDER: You say it’s my birthday

I share my recent birthday with a bunch of notables; unfortunately, the most famous is Adolf Hitler. I thought it would be it would be good to use the day in part for some ruminations – where I am, where I’ve been, what I foresee, fear, et al. Actually, I can do that any day of the year; a birthday is really just a number and some of what we ascribe to that date is arbitrary. Still, might as well make use of what we got.

One thing that is about my birthday fixed is that I share it with my twin brother, Joel. Joe and I are fraternal twins; we don’t look alike, sound alike or even sometimes think alike. Joe is a conservative Republican and I decidedly am not. Joe is a life member of the NRA; I decidedly am not.

However, when I called him on our shared birthday – which I always do – he picked up the phone and started doing his Elmer Fudd imitation, which I also did. It’s the way we start every phone conversation, usually with Elmer singing something inappropriate. We’ve been doing this long before Robin Williams did. We agree that Elmer is vastly unappreciated and has an extraordinary range, from the Stones and Springsteen to show tunes (he has an affinity for Lerner and Lowe – Fudd doing “Why Can’t the English Teach Their Children How To Speak?” from My Fair Lady may be the definitive rendering of that song). He also can do Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, and could play Stanley in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire; “Stehwwwwwaaaaaa!”

That is part of what forms me – family. In addition to Joe I have three sisters – Marge, Jane, and Pat. All wonderful people and all of them have dirt on me – as I do on them. I have an Aunt Helen who is going to 100 years old in June; her father also lived to be 100. So there is that in my DNA, although my father died much younger than that.

We lived across the street from the Roman Catholic church that I attended; I literally played in its shadow. While these days I am something on an agnostic – my gag is that I’m not dogmatic about it – I am very specifically a Roman Catholic agnostic. The god I have questions about is the image formed by the Roman Catholic upbringing. I was raised pre-Vatican II, back in the days when the Masses were in Latin. That also may be in my DNA.

I’m one of the baby boomer generation. I can’t quite remember a time before television but I remember a time when it was all in black and white. I can still reel off the names of most of my favorite shows – Zorro, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Ernie Kovacs (I was a strange kid), Fractured Flickers, Beany and Cecil, Garfield Goose (a Chicago kids TV show), Jack Paar when he had on Oscar Levant or Jonathan Winters (I was a very strange kid) and others. I remember the British invasion; as an early teen, I ushered at the Beatles concerts in Chicago. I was resistant to the Beatles until I saw A Hard Days Night; that’s when I became a fan. All part of my cultural DNA.

I got into theater because a Catholic girls H.S. was looking for boys to be part of their next production. A girl I liked attended that school and – well, c’mon. Being one of a few boys inside a girls’ high school? Of course you’re going to go there. I almost never saw the girl but the teacher/director – Mrs. Crawford – thought I had potential. I discovered the stage and that would form a great part of my life for the next almost twenty years. It also helped make me into the writer I am today.

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Spider-Man shovels it in

Spider-Man shovels it in

Spider-Man 3 has already earned nearly $30,000,000 and it hasn’t even opened in the United States.

The blockbuster-in-making has taken in a bundle in such places as France, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong, according to the Associated Press. You may have heard it’s opening in the States on Friday.

Then again, you may already be in line for the midnight showing.

 

Cartoonists Conundrum

Cartoonists Conundrum

While we’ve been in the throes of office hell, we’ve noticed some changes going on in cartoonist-land that bear passing along:

  • Alison Bechdel has announced that she’s cutting back on production of her popular Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip from biweekly to monthly, in order to work on her new memoir, which she estimates will be ready in 2009.  She’ll be interspersing the new strips with "archive strips" (aka reruns), the first of which was published today — check out the very first episode of DTWOF, from 20 years ago!  (And be sure to check out Amanda Marcotte’s review of Bechdel’s Fun Home on the A-list political blog Pandagon.)
  • Mikhaela Reid passes along the news about Ward Sutton ending Sutton Impact (check out The Beat for more) and about the closing of The New Standard, a very friendly venue for political cartoonists which will be sorely missed.  (See Glenn’s post below for further cartoonist troubles at larger circulation papers.)
  • We do have some good news to pass along, however.  The Ormes Society’s Cheryl Lynn has kicked off the Torchy Brown Art Meme over at her blog, the results of which will be published on TOS’s site.  (That’s Torchy over on the right.)  And Heidi MacDonald crows that the House of Twelve Comic Jam folks have a new meeting place, starting this very evening.  It’s not far from Jim Hanley’s, so Manhattanites can grab their weekly haul and a drink with that jam, if they have the bread.

And if you are going to drink, please draw responsibly.

Optimus Prime speaks

Optimus Prime speaks

If John Wayne were a giant robot with a gun, he would be Optimus Prime.

Now Peter Cullen, the voice of Optimus Prime from the original Transformers Generation One cartoon series (as well as the voice of Eeyore, Monterey Jack from Disney’s Rescue Rangers and Murky Dismal from Rainbow Brite) has given an interview on tformers.com . For those who don’t want to read the entire interview, Alan Kistler sent us the major highlights.

On deciding to audition for the new movies:

Cullen: "[I thought,] okay, what the heck. I’m going to go in and fand out what they want … Had they asked me to do changes in the character, I would have declined.

"It was interesting. I didn’t have any problem trying to find him … it was like riding a bike and he came right back … And he still stands for the qualities the writers gave him from the get go.

"The qualities of [all the Transformers] are still there. It’s like an elastic band and stretching it, but it’s still the eastic band and the strength of the characters are still there.

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Circulations drop at newspapers

Circulations drop at newspapers

Comic books aren’t the only media who are having bad times with circulation drops. Comic strips are feeling pinched too, perhaps even more, as many of the large metro newspapers across the country are experiencing significant circulation drops, according to the latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Circulation at The New York Times fell by 1.93%, at Tribune’s Newsday by 6.9% and at Belo’s Dallas Morning News by 14%. National dailies fared slightly better, remaining flat compared to last year.

Round up the usual suspects. Darn that Internet.

Who’s late?

Who’s late?

There won’t be a new Doctor Who episode a week from this Saturday, also known as May 12th here on Earth. The hit show is leaving this time–space continuum to make room for the Eurovision Song Contest and if they didn’t bump it the BBC would have to move the Doctor’s starting time up and the earlier the starting time the lower the ratings so screw it, they’re taking the week off.

Of course, the BBC is ad-free, so why sweat the ratings? Whatever. We’ll live. Angry, but breathing through it.

At least Doctor Who‘s not being bounced for Dancing With The McCartneys.

Spider-Man 3 advance tickets set new records

Spider-Man 3 advance tickets set new records

Fandango, the phone and online advance movie ticket source, sent out a press release saying that as of 9 this morning, Pacific time, 94% of all weekly ticket sales online were for Spider-Man 3.  Most of the Thursday midnight shows around the country have sold out, and lots of theaters added 3 AM shows. 

As comparison, Fandango reports that SM3 is selling six times as many tickets as SM2, and two and a half times as many tickets as Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at the same point in their sales cycles.

In an online poll, Fandango asked moviegoers their thoughts about possible Spider-Man movies in the future. In responding to the poll, 58% of fans said they would not consider buying a ticket to a fourth Spider-Man movie with someone other than Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Also, 52% of fans said they would not consider buying a ticket to a fourth Spider-Man movie if it were directed by someone other than Sam Raimi.