Warner Bros Wants To Reboot Superman Again!

PullMyFinger!

Don't expect a sequel to Superman Returns...

Warner Bros. wants to once again reboot the Superman franchise with a new film, not a sequel to Superman Returns.

Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov told The Wall Street Journal that Superman Returns "didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. ... It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. ... But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all"

Robinov also said that the next Superman will be as dark as possible, based on the success of The Dark Knight.

They want to make Superman dark eh? :pac:

Eh?!

As an aside I lost all respect for Ian Nathan in Empire magazine when he gave Superman Returns five stars. FIVE stars for a film that maybe deserved 3 tops. Maybe.

"Superman doesnt fly, he soars"

No, he doesnt Ian. You just wanted that line on the DVD cover

JangoFett

I loved Superman Returns, great direction and acting...however, the plot was a bit diluted from a previous movie..."LAND", ok Lex, we get it...you want land so you can sell it

In a new one I want to see it darker, have Lex in the White House at the start, NO SUPERBRAT, and for the love of Aquaman I wanna see a supervillain, Brainiac or Bizarro anyone?

I think its a good idea as much as I liked Superman Returns

robby^5

Interesting to see wheter they decide to recast superman or any other characters for that matter, I loved spacey as luthor, just that luthor wasnt a proper villian in the film.

Mark Hamill

Warner Bros. wants to once again reboot the Superman franchise with a new film, not a sequel to Superman Returns.

Warner Bros. Pictures Group President Jeff Robinov told The Wall Street Journal that Superman Returns "didn't quite work as a film in the way that we wanted it to. ... It didn't position the character the way he needed to be positioned. Had Superman worked in 2006, we would have had a movie for Christmas of this year or 2009. ... But now the plan is just to reintroduce Superman without regard to a Batman and Superman movie at all"

Does this mean we can get our money back for the first one?

abouttobebanned

This is just a reaction to Batman.

OK-Cancel-Apply

Nobody can relate to superman. Batman has no special powers - only money and his determination. Batman FTW!

aidan_walsh

So, what? Jonathan Kent will be shot dead down a Metropolis back alley?

faceman

Superman... dressed in black... meh! Feck that!

How come in Superman Returns, he gets Lois up the stick and fecks off for years not knowing he has a sprog. He comes back, finds out and also sees how mentally challenged the kid is, yet at the end of the movie, fecks off to space again and leaves Lois and the kid??? Superman is a muppet!

MagicMarker

They should make it a drama, where superman falls off a horse and paralyses himself.

indough

tbh, i know it sounds a bit vulgar but don't you think if superman came in lois it would have killed her? i mean the force of it like?

MooseJam

Bring back Zod !

Wacker

PullMyFinger! wrote: »

"Superman doesnt fly, he soars"

No, he doesnt Ian. You just wanted that line on the DVD cover

Fine bit of posting that, if my opinion counts for anything around here.

Full_Circle

Make the next Superman film dark, just cause The Dark Knight did so well? Isnt that simplifying things a little? :rolleyes:

Batman is supposed to be dark and Superman is supposed to be the exact opposite; a bright colourful shining light, a big boy scout who saves the world from giant asteroids and still has time to rescue cats outta trees on his way back home.

If they wanted to make him dark in any way, they'd have to go the Spiderman route and gradually build up to a darker storyline over a number of films (culminating in something involving Darkseid, for example).

indough

perhaps they mean make the world in which superman lives more dark rather than the character himself

Retr0gamer

Full_Circle wrote: »

If they wanted to make him dark in any way, they'd have to go the Spiderman route and gradually build up to a darker storyline over a number of films (culminating in something involving Darkseid, for example).

Or an emo dancing scene.

Fysh

OK-Cancel-Apply wrote: »

Nobody can relate to superman. Batman has no special powers - only money and his determination. Batman FTW!

"Batman is a conservative's wet dream. F*ck Batman!"

On a serious note though, the big problem with Superman as a character is that he is the Man Of Steel. A man who can fly, who is impervious to bullets, who is stronger than anyone else alive....how do you get an audience to care for that character, while still making him a credible hero? A character with no vulnerabilities isn't interesting to watch, and it's very difficult to make Superman a vulnerable character without it seeming like a preachy "everyone's got problems" story. He has been presented in the past as the American Dream incarnate, the superhero version of Harvey Dent's White Knight if you will, but that's never going to be an easy sell to audiences who now expect a more grounded and realistic depiction of their superheroes, thanks to the Bryan Singer X-Men movies and the Nolan Batman film.

Galvasean

indough wrote: »

perhaps they mean make the world in which superman lives more dark rather than the character himself

Indeed. Superman's world usually comes across as a bit twee. It would be interesting to see how DC's golden boy would react to living in the Nolanverse. I bet he wouldn't like it, which could make for a good film.

madrab

wouldnt ind them doing a version of red sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son

indough

madrab wrote: »

wouldnt ind them doing a version of red sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son

pretty safe to say that wont happen in the current political climate

Fysh

madrab wrote: »

wouldnt ind them doing a version of red sun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Red_Son

I think there are talks going on about making an animated adaptation of Red Son, although the only thing that's definitely been announced is the plan to make a Red Son Motion Comic.

Eglinton

I agree with a lot of the sentiments here. Superman 1 & 2 (I prefer to think of them as one film) are high on my favourite list , maybe even top. It's more of a boyhood eperience I suppose, rather like how some feel about Star Wars.

I was really looking forward to the 2006 film but very apprehensive about Singer's interpretation -And wow was I disappointed. The more I think about it the angrier I get. It's was all cutesy, no substance, story, sense of danger, character development. It was just candy floss.

I now think that the Smallville series is much more true to the story (the non filler episodes anyway) and I love the references, cameos and even the musical trends from the original films.

I wouldn't mind seeing a serious version of Smallville evolving into a Superman big budget flick, where something goes horribly wrong and as one poster said, the world becomes a much much darker place (please kill off Lana Lang soon! and get rid of the cheese). The only major problem with Smallville is that we've seen a huge amount of the villians already and they've effectively been killed off. They did a great job with some of the characters. It'd be tough to beat Zod and co from the original. I wouldn't have an issue with them bringing back characters that were killed off though. Continuity has never been a major forte of comic book flicks anyway.

BlitzKrieg

wait reboot again?

does it count as a reboot when its a sequel to the 2nd film and ignores the 3rd/4th film?

Handsome Bob

Dark eh? Not sure how well Superman will work set in a dark tone. He's not quite the conflicted and vigilante-like Batman. Superman has a clear way of doing things, that is why he clashes with Batman at times in the comics.

I had to laugh about the dark tone too for Superman. It reminds me of Kevin Smith writing a script for Superman with Jon Peters telling him he doesn't want Superman wearing a costume or actually flying.:pac:

BopNiblets

Noooooo no no, this is silly, knock it off Hollywood!
Just go ahead and make the Man Of Steel and have it so Luthor runs for president or something and some other villain shows up and beats Earth up a bit but supes saves the day in the end, srsly, knock it off you damn kids! >:(

Mully

indough wrote: »

tbh, i know it sounds a bit vulgar but don't you think if superman came in lois it would have killed her? i mean the force of it like?

I think this was done in Hancock, but was cut from the released version.

DVD maybe ?

Vic Vinegar

faceman wrote: »

Superman... dressed in black... meh! Feck that!

How come in Superman Returns, he gets Lois up the stick and fecks off for years not knowing he has a sprog. He comes back, finds out and also sees how mentally challenged the kid is, yet at the end of the movie, fecks off to space again and leaves Lois and the kid??? Superman is a muppet!

Way to spoil the film there for the uninitiated, Faceman!

zAbbo

It's more or less impossible not to make money from any big budget film, so why not reboot it into whatever style of movie is doing well.

The last Superman was utter pants, terrible.

FionnMatthew

Fysh wrote: »

"Batman is a conservative's wet dream. F*ck Batman!"

On a serious note though, the big problem with Superman as a character is that he is the Man Of Steel. A man who can fly, who is impervious to bullets, who is stronger than anyone else alive....how do you get an audience to care for that character, while still making him a credible hero? A character with no vulnerabilities isn't interesting to watch, and it's very difficult to make Superman a vulnerable character without it seeming like a preachy "everyone's got problems" story. He has been presented in the past as the American Dream incarnate, the superhero version of Harvey Dent's White Knight if you will, but that's never going to be an easy sell to audiences who now expect a more grounded and realistic depiction of their superheroes, thanks to the Bryan Singer X-Men movies and the Nolan Batman film.

I think the traditional approach has been to focus on his vulnerabilities as a person, and his attempted integration into society, and the pain it causes him etc... Of all the superheroes, his duality is the most striking, because it is Superman that Lois loves, etc.

TBH, I don't think a realistic interpretation is viable. Batman, after all, doesn't have super powers. He's a superhero by dint of his heroic conscience. Superman is a... well... a superman. It's kind of non-realistic on its initial premises.

Reginald D Hunter wrote:

"Rich dude, owns a corporation, has state of the art equipment. He uses this to beat up on street level crime. He doesn't mess with the industrialists or the super-capitalists, the Murdochs or the Trumps, he'd rather just **** with the chumps on his own corner. Batman is a conservative's wetdream. **** Batman."

Stupid point.

why does every political point have to be strictly liberal/conservative for Americans? It's such a false dichotomy.

He uses his equipment not to beat up on street level crime, but to bust ORGANIZED CRIME, and CORRUPTION within the established order. If anything, Batman is a reformist.

And anyone who knows anything about Batman knows that he goes after the industrialists and the super-capitalists just as doggedly. In Frank Miller's hands, he's essentially an anarchist.

It's just so banal to assume that just because American conservatives use the rhetoric of the sort of just war on crime that Batman embodies (and which is, in reality, impossible, but no more than an ideal) that Batman is therefore an "evil conservative." It's like saying oatmeal is bad because Saddam ate pools of it. Loved the stuff.

Batman is about an ideal of justice unbowed. He's completely uncompromising. Nobody is beyond his judgment. The sort of corruption and incest that characterizes mainstream American politics, whether it's "liberals" or "conservatives" is the sort of thing that Batman doesn't tolerate. He's not a conservative. He's not more of a conservative than Robin Hood.

"I won't watch Batman because he's conservative!"

What a join-the-dots, simplex, typically American political interpretation of Batman.

Fysh

FionnMatthew wrote: »

I think the traditional approach has been to focus on his vulnerabilities as a person, and his attempted integration into society, and the pain it causes him etc... Of all the superheroes, his duality is the most striking, because it is Superman that Lois loves, etc.

I think by "striking", you mean "boring", because that's what it is. Superman is pretty much the original teenage power fantasy - "beneath the boring, shy, unassuming and dutiful identity of Joe Nobody secretly lies Uberman, who no man can defeat and no woman can resist!".

His vulnerabilities as a person have mostly been rather poorly explored. As an individual the only way that the audience can sympathise with him is by presenting him as an outsider or an immigrant, because that way you can get at greater themes such as sense of identity, the sadness of being removed from your homeland with no chance to return, etc. Playing up this "oh, his vulnerability stems from his attempt to become human" nonsense is like the whole Kryptonite gubbins, an attempt to bolt on a vulnerability to a perfect character so that he can still be "interesting".

FionnMatthew wrote: »

why does every political point have to be strictly liberal/conservative for Americans? It's such a false dichotomy.

You, eh, appear to be taking a simple gag rather seriously, what with Batman being fictional and Hunter being a comedian. Aside from which, I took that joke as being as much about the over-simplification of political issues as about Batman's Bush-loving ways...

Alicat

They can't make Superman dark....the man wears bright red pants over blue tights....it's too corny to ever be 'dark'!

And while we're on the subject of the Superman movies, Kate Bosworth was absolute sh!te as Lois Lane. I couldn't have given a cr@p what happened to her that whole movie, so lifeless. I thought Lois was supposed to have balls?*




*obviously I don't mean real life testicles but you know what I mean!

Handsome Bob

Fysh wrote: »

You, eh, appear to be taking a simple gag rather seriously, what with Batman being fictional and Hunter being a comedian. Aside from which, I took that joke as being as much about the over-simplification of political issues as about Batman's Bush-loving ways...

Batman doesn't affiliate himself with any side, he see's himself as above the law and takes matters into his own hands. Superman believes in the system, if you take The Dark Knight Returns for example, he had the power to stop the nuke from launching but he gave the benefit of the doubt and as a result disaster struck. This is why I think using a dark tone for Superman is a bad decision.