Not too long ago, there was a financial analyst who came out with a report that comic to film adaptations were basically a bad investment. This was, of course, before the Avengers film came out.  But Marvel isn’t the only one finding success in bringing comic books to life. The Walking Dead TV series is arguably one of the best shows on today. Then there’s the big surprise that Arrow was picked up for another season. While Dredd didn’t do so well in the theaters, if you haven’t seen it already, I urge you to check it out.  It’s no fluke that the film garnered a 73% audience rating and a 78% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

We’ve been hearing a lot of reports about a Justice League film in the works, but DC actually has a number of adaptations in pre-production… or pre-pre-production….

The CW has their sights set on a Flash TV show. It will be an origin story, says CW president Mark Pedowitz. Basically, the character Barry Allen will appear in season 2 of Arrow and pretty much serve as the launch of the spin-off. One of Arrow’s execs is also working on a Flash feature-length film for Warner to be released sometime in 2016. While a Flash film has been rumored for years, with David Goyer being attached back in 2004 as writing a script, the film does have an IMDB page now. Warner insists that the film and the TV show will be independent of each other.

Director Guillermo Del Toro is trying to make Justice League Dark happen.  If he gets to direct it, an adaptation seems to be right up his alley considering the look and feel of his prior work Pan’s Labrynth.  I tend to think something like this would heavily depend on the the success (or failure) of the imminent Justice League film but Del Toro seems optimistic that it might even come out before. Which might not be a stretch considering the fact that Ben Affleck has just been cast as Batman… sorry, I almost just passed out there for a moment. What were we talking about again? Oh yeah… Now there’s word that Justin Timberlake wants to play the Riddler, which might not be a bad idea…

 

Fables is a comic about the real life challenges that well-known nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters face when they are forced to live and survive in New York. This one seems like it might actually happen considering it has a director who co-wrote the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a screenwriter, and a producer from the Harry Potter franchise on board. I think it’s the perfect time for a film like this. A number of Fairy Tale-type films have come out lately and while not all have been critically-acclaimed, they haven’t exactly been box-office disasters either. We’ve had Snow White and the Huntsman, The Great and Powerful Oz, that other Snow White movie, not to mention the huge success of Wicked, the Broadway show adaptation of the book adaptation of the same name. Now we have Maleficent coming out starring Angelina Jolie. Maleficent, if you remember, was that awesome witch from Sleeping Beauty. Looking forward to that one…

 

News of a Sandman adaptation has been bouncing around for close to 10 years, which comes as no surprise considering it is one of the few graphic novels to appear on the New York Times bestseller list and has been critically hailed as one of the best of all time. Of course, we’re not talking about the literal sand man, the villain from Spiderman but the DC comic about a guy named Dream who looks like a cross between Alice Cooper and L from Death Note.  A guy that roams around in your dreams? Seems like Guillermo del Toro might want to direct this one, too. A couple months ago, writer Neil Gaiman expressed his displeasure with an old Sandman script he had read, saying he couldn’t bring himself to read even one version of it.  Considering this character has crossed over into both Swamp Thing and Constantine (Hellblazer) in the past, it might not be that big of a stretch to see him pop up in the Justice League Dark film. (I’d be particularly interested in seeing Death, at the very least). So while this one might not be coming out any time soon, I wouldn’t count it out just yet.  Except for maybe this idea…

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