Yeah, I suppose if I'd had an ancestor who had come up with something brilliant like Superman I'd want to profit from his genius too.

But it sounds as if these relatives aren't satisfied with mere millions, they want many millions. Of course they'll come to a deal eventually, but, it sounds like it will be unpleasant to get there.

The (minor) irony is here they are, paid already and wanting more, and yet the estate of J.R.R. Tolkein has not received a single CENT from the current hobbit films due to creative accounting that claims that the current hobbit films made no money.

Sounds like the Tolkiens should talk to Siegel & Shuster's lawyers.

Yeah, they should. They have a contract that gives them 7.5% of the gross of the Rings. NewLine says that the gross is $0, so they don't get anything.

Pity for them

You are right the second will be a great one in superman series. I hope they make a sequel like what makes batman series a great hit.

Can I nominate Rashida Jones for the part of Lois Lane? She is the spitting image of a young Margot Kidder.

I don't care that she looks like Kidder. I just like her. I thought the Studio wanted to break away from the Donner movies now.

You know, I don't think we've ever gotten a really good Lois Lane. She's always been a somewhat generic character, and it would be really great if someone could come along and do for her what Michael Cain did for Alfred.

Agreed. I don't think that the Lane for the Reeves films (first two, anyway) was written badly, but Kidder never did anything for me. At least she had some screen presence, though. Kate Bosworth was just a void onscreen.

They need to let Supes rest a bit. Make the next film a real event, and hopefully start it all over with no ties to the previous films. Probably means yet another origin film, but maybe not.

While not the films, Smallville had a unique opportunity to do that with Allison Mack if they would have gone in the direction of what some call "Chlois".  I have to say there's no comparison between her acting abilities and the horrid job Erica Durance does.  She's easily the worst Lois Lane I've ever seen on screen (and I've seen them all).

I agree the film Lanes haven't been overwhelming, and most of the TV versions have only had so much to work with.  I guess Hatcher wins that battle, although I'll always have a soft spot for both Phyllis and Noel.  But yeah, the next film needs to really nail a definitive Lois Lane.  Just, for goodness sake, don't model her after ED's Lois on SV.  Such a horrid incarnation.

Gary "I don't know Rashida Jones work well enough to comment on her" O.

I thought Kidder embodied her perfectly. Up till that point she was a more or less one dimensional character. Kidder gave her some quirky pizazz that I now can't begin to disassociate from the character. Hatcher and Bosworth, despite being more physically attractive, I felt lacked that essential spark and that's why they'll always be pretenders to the throne for me (well, Bosworth wouldn't even make handmaiden, but you get the gist).

I don't need Lois be cover girl attractive (which is how I would classify both Hatcher and Bosworth). I liked that Kidders appeal is rooted more in her personality than her physical looks.


I still think Lauren Graham (?) would have made a pitch perfect Lois. It would have necessitated an older Clark/Superman- but that wouldn't have been a negative to me either. She also could have been presented as the parent of a 5 year old without inducing laughter and derision.

I still think I veer towards the possibility of Anne Hathaway as Lois Lane at times.

Well they are fast tracking Superman now because of the rights issue.


www.iesb.net/index.php

If they are starting from scratch again, I have two big pieces of advice:

1. Do not re-tell the origin story. Everyone knows it already, so all it will do is make the story feel stagnant while all everyone wants to see is Superman saving Metropolis with wham-bam action. Just start with the established Superman mythos of Kent and Lane working at the planet with Jimmy Olsen, and Superman protecting Metropolis. If you need to recap the origin, either do it in an opening montage (see: The Incredible Hulk (2008)) or show some bits and pieces in flashback if it serves the specific story of the film. Otherwise, leave it alone.

2. Lex Luthor should be nowhere near this film.

Babies in the womb know the story of Superman.  Just jump right into it.


I may be reading a lot into a single sentence, but I see a lot of people who seem to think those of us who didn't like SR or the Lee Hulk didn't like it because there wasn't enough punchin' or shit explodin'.  Sorry, my mind starts to wander when there is wall to wall action.  I don't mind quiet character moments.  It's just, the ones in those two movies were not very good.  When Superkid was walking around with a trash can on his head . . . WTF?  Make a good Superman movie with little action and I'll be down for it.  

I just have feeling its the end for Routh. He did a great job IMO.  But in a way I was never a fan of directly connecting to the Donner movies.

 As the early seasons of Battlestar Galactica illustrated- drama is conflict, and good drama is finding all those major avenues and tiny side streets of conflict that would spring up from any given 'fantastic' situation.

I don't need or want wall to wall action either. The next film needs some good, multi-faceted conflicts that build to action set pieces.
What conflicts haven't we seen before, but would be logical and organic to the situation?
Superman in conflict with the Government?
Superman in conflict with a popular demagogue?
Superman in conflict with organized religion?


Think out of the box, Warner.

The kid played with a trash can on his head partly because he was a kid, and partly to show the audience that he did not yet have x-ray vision.

"I thought Kidder embodied her perfectly. Up till that point she was a more or less one dimensional character. Kidder gave her some quirky pizazz"

I didn't think it at the time, but later on, looking back on the depiction of the character it seemed that Kidder's Lois Lane was a coke-head. She was an anorexic, hyperactive, work-work-work reporter. Superman scolded her for smoking, but he should have checked what else she was doing. On the plus side, she was into healthy fruit juice.

My out-of-the-box suggestion would be to have Superman appear via some dimensional accident in a universe similar to ours -- a universe without superheros. But also a universe without comic books or else it would get cheesy fast. So no one knows who the heck he is. He'd have to prove himself to a world that is cynical and doesn't even believe he is real. Or maybe not. The problem with comic book movies is how to avoid the existence of comic books. It's almost impossible.

But if he stays in the DC universe, I suppose I'd do what Superman II did -- introduce Super Villains. And maybe an easy way to do so would be for that growing-planetoid that Superman lifted into space (in SR) to continue growing, and for its crystals to start becoming infused with intelligence, and for it to create some humanoids to send down to Earth to mercilessly begin researching. But not in a library. By tearing things apart. Maybe there's more than one or two. Maybe it sends down hundreds of people-looking forms and no one knows who is human and who is a super-villain until their friend or partner tests them. Even if Superman destroys the planetoid, those people-shaped forms would still be wreaking havoc on Earth. Cameo by a CGI Marlon Brando to serve as the planetoid's evil (twisted) intelligence. No goatee. Just evil by being purely scientific, without ethics. The evil of Nazi scientists. Or maybe the planetoid is slowly repopulating the Earth with reproduction (flawed reproductions) of all the people of Kypton. So eventually Superman finds that all these replicants are plotting to take over the Earth as their new home, even though they're not "real". And Supes would object. An anti-colonialism message perhaps?

We can guess that Singer's plan for the sequel may have involved the planetoid since Parker Posey's character very explicitly dumps the "smart" crystals out of the helicopter onto the crumbling surface. (Lex screams at her "what did you do?!!!" in anger). Singer had some reason why those key crystals, those databank crystals with the accumulated knowledge of all of Krypton, got left on that growing body.



Edited by Will_B - 8/3/2009 at 01:16 am GMT

Wachowskis...still perhaps?

http://screenrant.com/future-superman-involved-rob-19659/

I still hope not. Superman needs somebody bright, bold, and technicolor behind the camera. I'd pick someone like Baz Luhrmann before the Wachowskis.

I don't think you can get much more bright and bold than Speed Racer.

Bleah.  That's exactly what they don't need--a big tie to that movie.  Sever all connections with it, I say.

I completely forgot about that movie, probably because I had no interest in it, and you're absolutely right. The trailers were definitely bright and bold. I'd still prefer someone who doesn't already have a franchise with a flying man under their belt.

I'd suggest Timur Bekmambetov, but the idea of a Soviet directing a Superman movie just doesn't seem right somehow.

I'm not familiar with him at all, but the thought of getting someone who grew up in another culture- one not dominated by American, or more significantly, Western  pop material, might be a very good suggestion. Someone like that might be able to see the mythology with fresh eyes and key in on aspects of the characters, themes, myth, etc that pass by the rest of us as white noise now.
Of course, they could frak it up too- but their input might yield some interesting results....being informed by cultural mythology that is similar but different than our own. There are some Russian fairytales that are quite fascinating.


just a thought.

I'd take Timur for Red Son :)

And Speed Racer is the film that made me think the Wachowskis would nail it.  They could just run with the All Star series by Morrison and Quitely.

those would be the best movies ever made. ever.

:)

From what I read in Variety, it looks like Warner Bros. is legally barred from making another Superman origin picture:

Superman co-creator's family given rights

Siegels now control character's Krypton origins

By MARC GRASER

Warner Bros. and DC Comics have lost a little more control over the Man of Steel.

In an ongoing Federal court battle over Superman, Judge Stephen Larson ruled Wednesday that the family of the superhero's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, has "successfully recaptured" rights to additional works, including the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic-books.
 

The ruling is based on the court's finding that these were not "works-made-for-hire" under the Copyright Act.
 

This means the Siegels -- repped by Marc Toberoff of Toberoff & Associates -- now control depictions of Superman's origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.
 

The first Superman story was published in 1938 in Action Comics No. 1. For $130, Jerry Siegel and co-creator Joel Schuster signed a release in favor of DC's predecessor, Detective Comics, and a 1974 court decision ruled they signed away their copyrights forever.
 

In 2008, the same court order ruled on summary judgment that the Siegels had successfully recaptured (as of 1999) Siegel's copyright in Action Comics No. 1, giving them rights to the Superman character, including his costume, his alter-ego as reporter Clark Kent, the feisty reporter Lois Lane, their jobs at the Daily Planet newspaper working for a gruff editor, and the love triangle among Clark/Superman and Lois.
 

While ownership of the Man of Steel is one point of all this legal activity, the real issue is money and how much Warner Bros. and DC owe the Siegels from profits they collected from Superman since 1999, when the heirs' recapture of Siegel's copyright became effective.
 

DC owns other elements like Superman's ability to fly, the term kryptonite, the Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen characters, Superman's powers and expanded origins.

On one hand this is good news, because it means we won't get yet another rehash of the origin story. On the other hand, this could mean that Warner Bros. just plain scraps future big-screen adventures with the character all together.

It makes no sense for Warner to be locked into an "origin story or nothing" attitude.  Why would they?

 well that explains why the studio keeps making noises about wanting to change the costume. If they can 'brand' a new costume to the character they can circumvent a big aspect of that '99 legal decision.

It's not that it's an "origin story or nothing" attitude. The other provisions of the court ruling, while providing an incentive to put a new Superman movie into production by 2011 might also impose a greater incentive to just let the franchise lapse. This whole mess is the result of a well-intentioned but poorly thought out provision of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act. Had that act not passed, the earliest works featuring Superman would have started to enter the public domain in 2007, however future works featuring Superman would have been protected by trademark for D.C. Comics.