‘ALL’S FAIR IN WAR’ WHEN FORTIER TAKES ON DOMINO LADY!
Before Star Trek was Fringe and Lost, and Alias and before Alias was Felicity. It may be hard to recall that genre wunderkind Abrams actually broke into television by making a splash in 1998 with the WB series about a college girl. Created with Cabin in the Woods collaborator Matt Reeves, the series is worth a second look given the storytelling, music, and keen eye for casting that first introduced to an armload of performers who have gone on to success, including repeat appearances in later Abrams productions. Or do you think Keri Russell’s cameo in Mission: Impossible 3 was an oddity?
Lionsgate has resurrected the first two seasons in newly packaged DVDs, both out this week. The WB knew that a female-skewing series with a high concept would be a good fit for their struggling network so when Abrams and Reeves turned up with the concept, there was excitement. Susanne Daniels excitedly listened as Abrams outlined a five season arc for Felicity Porter, who would chuck everything she and her parents planned for, to follow a boy from California to New York. The boy barely knew she existed but all it took was for him to sign her yearbook and she was hooked.
So was Daniels who has written, “He brings heart to a pitch and can tell you clearly why anyone would or should care about the world he’s describing. But the single most impressive thing about J.J. is the depth of analysis he lays out in a compelling, almost professorial way. He can tell you everything about every character and their story arcs. And he can tell you how and why his show fits into your network, in the television business, and the world at large, and how the audience will relate to it.” (more…)
All of a sudden I find myself in the midst of a half-dozen publishing projects. All are comics, and all but one are comics stories.
Here’s the rub: I’m dying to tell you about them. Really. I’d kill to tell you about them. But I can’t. I’m not the publisher, I’m not the artist, I’m not the writer of most of them, and I’m not the publicist. So it’s not my place to blab. I’m the editor, the dealmaker, and in at least one case the conceptualizer. So you’d think my ego, which even I call The Hulk, could handle a bit of a wait.
Well, no. That’s why I call my ego The Hulk. That’s why, when Jack Kirby came up with an entire living planet named Ego (Thor #132, cover-dated September 1966), I identified like crazy.
There’s another reason. These deals haven’t been papered yet. “Papered” is high-falutin’ dealmaker speak for “signed contract” or “signed letter of agreement,” which are the same thing. Anyway, any or all of them can still collapse. That happens all the time.
So my ego is so big I’m telling you these deals are happening even though they haven’t been papered yet. Of course, having a signed deal is no guarantee that a project will ever start, let alone be released. If you took all the development proposals, all the unreleased master tapes both audio and video, all the edited film footage and laid ‘em all end to end, it would stretch from the San Diego convention center all the way to Ego The Living Planet.
So you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit excited. I’ll be working with friends old and new, including at least seven folks who are currently involved with ComicMix. There is no greater pleasure (with my clothes on) than doing creative work with good friends. People whose talent I can count on and the readers enjoy. People whose work habits are compatible with mine and vice versa. People I can call at 2 AM if they’re late on a deadline.
True story. Back when I was working at DC Comics in New York, I made an emergency trip to Chicago to be there for my father during his surgery. Of course there was nothing I could do during the surgery itself, but I was a ten-minute drive away from a freelancer who was almost a month late on a deadline. I borrowed my father’s car – hell, he wasn’t using it – and drove to said freelancer’s apartment. He wasn’t home, so I bribed the building superintendent into letting me in. I took a sheet of art board and scrawled in red marker “HEY! WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU! YOU’RE LATE! I BETTER HAVE THE PAGES ON MY DESK BY MONDAY! Love, Mike Gold.” I taped it to his drawing table and then I returned to the hospital, stopping only for an Italian beef sandwich. Yes, I had those pages on my desk by Monday.
So pay attention and you’ll hear about all this stuff. I hope. Actually, we teased a couple of them at the C2E2 convention last week, so if you were there you can easily connect some of the dots. And I should be in San Diego annoying the masses with all this as well.
Huckstering is an intrinsic part of our popular culture. But I pride myself in my inherently total lack of common sense to promote nothing by name… and to do so months in advance.
Yeah, that’s how excited I am.
THURSDAY: Is Dennis O’Neil Really Tony Stark?
Pack up and head to Camp North Star this summer as Lionsgate debuts the wacky comedy Meatballs on Blu-ray Disc, Digital Download and On Demand for the first time. Directed by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), the hilarious summer camp adventure stars Oscar® nominee Bill Murray (Best Actor in a Leading Role, Lost in Translation, 2003) in his first leading role. The film also stars Harvey Atkin (TV’s “Law & Order: SVU”) and Kate Lynch (New Year). Featuring a new audio commentary with director Ivan Reitman, Meatballs makes its high-definition premiere on June 12th, for the suggested retail price of $14.99. The DVD will also be available for the suggested retail price of $9.98.
Tripper (Murray) is about to have a summer he will never forget. As head counselor at Camp North Star, an off-the-wall summer getaway, Tripper guides his loveable campers and spirited staff members on a quest for fun in the sun. But when the season begins with a runaway camper, an accidental blackout and Tripper’s amorous attack on a female counselor, everyone knows that the tales by the fireside will only get more outrageous as the summer goes on.
Pre-orders are now available for the audio dramas of HONEY WEST and DOMINO LADY at http://audiocomicscompany.com/. Visit the site for more information on these cool new audio dramas.
Only Jimmy Holm and the strange alliance of power political leaders and Underworld kingpins known collectively as the Secret Twelve possess the will to stand against Death and his Undead things. But to win, Holm must ally himself with the mysterious Egyptian ruler known as Queen Charmion. Can she be trusted? More importantly, how do you defeat a human monster who can implant his soul in the body of any living person at will? Can anyone be trusted if they might be in reality…Doctor Death? Buy the second audiobook of one of our most popular titles for only $17.98 on Audio CDs from Radio Archives.
Like most Americans, I learned about Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers from their countless adaptations on screen and in print. For me, it was probably Sheldon Mayer’s Three Mouseketeers reprints along with the rallying cry of “One for all, and all for one” shouted by just about every cartoon, sitcom and prime time drama at one point or another. Sure, there was the delightful two film adaptation made by Ilya Salkind that was instrumental in their approach to Superman the Movie and my kids grew up adoring the somewhat boiled down, tongue-slightly-in-cheek version from Disney with a great cast (Oliver Platt, Kiefer Sutherland, Tim Curry, etc.). It wasn’t until last year that I actually read the book in its entirety and it was a revelation.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0P_ul-3d7g[/youtube]
Billed as a modern retelling, The Three Musketeers from Summit Entertainment, was therefore eagerly awaited. It had been over a decade since the Disney film so the time must have felt right and director Paul W.S. Anderson, certainly knew how to make commercial fare to appeal to today’s younger audiences. Screenwriter Alex Litvak certainly knows how to handle action given his work on Predators and the casting sounded right: Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans), Porthos (Ray Stevenson) and D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman) versus Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) and Rochefort (Mads Mikkelsen). There was the sex appeal of Milady (Milla Jovovich) and her would-be lover Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). (more…)
Not that long ago, Paramount Home Video gave us the four Indiana Jones films in a wonderful box set but even then we began anticipating the eventually release of the movies on Blu-ray. This seems to be the year for Steven Spielberg movies to make their high definition debuts as we get Jaws in August and the Indy movies in October.
These are already being made available for pre-order at Amazon, discounting the list price of $99.99.
Of course, there are some completists out there still waiting for the young Indiana Jones television episodes to be spruced up and released but I guess we still need to wait a bit.
Here’s the official press release:
The man with the hat is back – and looking better than ever! The world’s favorite globe-trotting archaeologist is, at long last, embarking on his greatest adventure – when The Complete Indiana Jones Blu-ray Collection comes to Blu-ray Disc from Lucasfilm Ltd. and Paramount Home Media Distribution. The Complete Indiana Jones Blu-ray Collection will be excavated in the fall of 2012 and will include all four of Indy’s thrilling adventures, using the highest possible high definition picture and audio presentation – along with a “best of” collection of documentaries, interviews, featurettes and a few new surprises.