Five Comic Book Movies We Want to See (And the Directors We Want to Direct Them)
by Tom Burns

Now that The Dark Knight is doing such an impressive job chasing Titanic's record as the highest grossing movie EVER - though we're still pretty sure that Jack and Rose will keep their box-office crown at the end of the day - it's safe to say that you can expect lots and lots of new superhero movies to be clogging up your local movie theatre in the near future. It's not that we don't love comic book movies, but we're just a little surprised that we haven't reached the point of critical saturation yet, you know, that point where audiences get a little sick of the superhero trend. But if audiences sat through the summer of 2008 - watching Hancock, Dark Knight, Hellboy 2, Hulk, Iron Man, etc. - and they're STILL not sick of superheroes... it looks like comic book filmmaking is still a pretty safe bet in Hollywood.

That being said, now that the genre has proven so popular, we want to see more variety in our comic book movie product. Fine, we love seeing big-marquee names like the X-Men and Superman on the big screen, but there are also a million, less traditional comic book properties that are just dying for a multi-million-dollar Hollywood adaptation. Thus, in a special edition of our normal Movie Matchmaker feature, we at The Deadbolt present the five comic book movie adaptations we want to see more than any other AND the five directors we want to bring these comics to the silver screen. So, take note, soulless Hollywood dealmakers trying to cash in on the success of The Dark Knight, here are five projects that you should definitely be shilling to your local media conglomerate.

Comic: Fables (Vertigo)

What's It About: All of the characters you know and love from your favorite fairy tales, legends, nursery rhymes, and folktales are alive and well. A large contingent of these "fables" - including Snow White, Prince Charming, Jack the Giant Killer, Little Boy Blue, Old King Cole, and the Big Bad Wolf (now known as Bigby) - are living in a secret community in New York City, having fled the Fable-world after it was overrun by the mysterious Adversary, who, even hundreds of years later, is still very interested in the expatriates of Fabletown.

Who Should Direct it?: Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction, The Kite Runner, Quantum of Solace)

Why Him?: Bill Willingham's Fables does an amazing job of creating a literary world where the lines between fiction and reality are forever blurred - a state of mind that Marc Forster actually has some experience with. In Finding Neverland, he artfully showed audiences how the real world informed J.M. Barrie's fantastical creation of Never-Neverland and the Peter Pan legend. Stranger Than Fiction is all about the overlap of storytelling and reality, casting Will Ferrell as the beleaguered protagonist of his own life story who's doomed to hear an omniscient narrator describing every mundane detail of his day-to-day life (and eventual death). Plus Forster proved that he knows how to create a faithful page-to-screen adaptation with his underrated Kite Runner. And if that's a little too literary and frou-frou for your tastes, how about this... take one look at the Quantum of Solace trailer currently on the internet and tell me that Forster couldn't bring all of Fables' beyond-cool action sequences - from Goldilocks stalking Bigby and Snow through the wilderness to the March of the Wooden Soldiers - to life on the big-screen in the most kick-ass way possible. Forster's an A-List director, and Fables is A-list comic material. A fairy tale match, if we ever saw one.

Comic: Ex Machina (Wildstorm)

What's It About: Mitchell Hundred is the world's only superhero, a former civil engineer who gained the ability to talk to mechanical objects and briefly fought crime under the name The Great Machine. However, after he saves one of the Twin Towers on September 11th, the civics-minded Hundred takes his newfound fame and uses it to become elected the new mayor of New York City.

Who Should Direct it?: Martin Scorsese (The Departed, Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, the list goes on and on and on...)

Why Him?: OK, we know this is a bigger longshot than the Cubs winning the World Series, but why the hell not? Marty - you've got your Oscar. Now it's time to have some fun. If you were ever going to play around with some genre-work, you couldn't pick better superhero material than Ex Machina. The main reason we like the Scorsese/Machina match is that Brian K. Vaughn's comic book is possibly the greatest comic book love letter to New York City ever published and (aside perhaps from Woody Allen), we can't think of a filmmaker who better understands the ins-and-outs of NYC than Martin Scorsese. Ex Machina is this beautiful blend of gorgeously written superhero drama and a West Wing-style deconstruction of New York City politics. Where else can you read about a superhero abandoning his high-flying adventures to deal with labor strikes, school vouchers, war protests, gay marriage, and just about every other social issue that comes screaming out of the Five Boroughs? This movie will only work if a true born-and-bred New Yorker brings it to the big screen, and we would just LOVE to see what Scorsese would do with it.

Comic: The Boys (Dynamite)

What's It About: In a world peopled by corporate-sponsored amoral superheroes, who watches the watchmen? That'd be The Boys, a covert group of the smartest, dirtiest bastards on the block, who will blackmail, intimidate, or kill whoever it takes to keep the superhero population in check.

Who Should Direct it?: Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock, & Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Revolver, RocknRolla)

Why Him?: The Boys may be filled with explicit sex, violence, superhero satire, and social commentary, but the main selling point of Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's raunchy revelation of a comic book is its no-holds-barred, masterfully filthy dialogue, and whoever brings The Boys to the big screen will have to be comfortable working blue. Enter Guy Ritchie. Sure, Ritchie's reputation has taken a tumble in his post-Madonna period, but rewatch Lock, Stock and Snatch and you will witness a virtuoso at work, a director so skilled at bringing life and energy to some of the dirtiest words in the English language that it's almost like he was born to direct The Boys. Plus - aside from his keen ear for dialogue - Ritchie knows a thing or two about sex and violence, he's got a nicely dark satiric bent, you could almost cast The Boys entirely with actors from Ritchie's previous films, and Ritchie is getting into the comics world himself, creating the series Gamekeeper for Virgin Comics. He's ****ing PERFECT for The Boys.

Comic: Aleister Arcane (IDW)

What's It About: When the conservative and judgmental community in a small Oklahoma town forces a local TV horror movie host, Aleister Arcane, off the air, Arcane decides to delve into the macabre to have his revenge. But will a group of horror-loving teens be able to convince Arcane that he's gone too far before it's too late?

Who Should Direct it?: Joe Dante (Gremlins, InnerSpace, The Burbs, Matinee, Showtime's Masters of Horror)

Why Him?: Because if you've watched his body of work (including his early films like Piranha and The Howling), read anything about the man, or if you've seen Matinee - which might be one of the pinnacles of his career - then you know that Joe Dante KNOWS B-movie culture, possibly better than any director currently working in Hollywood. And Aleister Arcane is the kind of sweet/scary horror property that sounds like it came straight out of Eerie, Indiana. While horror comics icon Steve Niles gets all of the buzz for his more bloodthirsty work like 30 Days of Night, the lesser-read Aleister Arcane (with beautiful artwork by Breehn Burns, the creator of Dr. Tran) is one of the best comics that Niles has ever been associated with. The premise is gorgeously nostalgic - what if the host of your local creature-feature cursed your parents, turning them into monsters - and Dante knows how to both pay tribute to the B-movie era and mine the conventions of the genre for the maximum payload of laughs and thrills. Dante hasn't done much high-profile theatrical work lately (his last was the turgid Looney Tunes: Back in Action), but that's because he hasn't had the right material to work with. With a concept like Aleister Arcane, Dante could cut loose and prove to a whole new generation that it takes skill to make you laugh and scream at the same time.

Comic: Lobster Johnson (Dark Horse)

What's It About: Straight from the pages of Mike Mignola's Hellboy comes Lobster Johnson, a 1930s-era pulp-fiction vigilante who punches and shoots his way to justice, saving dames as he takes on the weirdest of the weird, ranging from Nazi scientists, creatures from beyond, evil yetis, and malicious mobsters (not in that order).

Who Should Direct it?: Kerry Conran (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow)

Why Him?: Because even though Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow wasn't a perfect movie, it showed both awesome potential and an amazing visual verve, which should be reason enough to give Sky Captain creator Kerry Conran a chance to bring another wild pulp adventure to your local multiplex. Yes, Sky Captain didn't exactly light the world on fire, but the images that Conran made against a simple green-screen were ASTOUNDING, and it's a shame that the guy apparently couldn't leverage his Sky Captain exposure into another gig. (Check Conran's IMDB page and prepare to be depressed.) That's why we'd love to give him such potent material as Lobster Johnson to play with. Aside from his fantastically-cool name, Lobster Johnson is a sublime pulp serial throwback, a hardnosed masked crime fighter who never blinks in the face of danger - whether it be a simple crimelord or a Lovecraftian demon - and who loves to burn his trademark lobster-claw symbol into the face of his victims. Guillermo Del Toro's Hellboy movies have done a great job of translating Mike Mignola's visuals into the real world, but it'd be way too much fun to turn Lobster Johnson over to a CGI virtuoso like Conran - particularly since he has such an affinity for the pulp era - and watch him set loose his unlimited canvas and bring a very, very weird 1930s to the big screen.