Brian Damage
06-26-2009, 01:54 AM
"We blew Elektra," admitted Penn, who wrote the Jennifer Garner film. "We blew chunks. It should have been R-rated, like Sin City. ... It should have been La Femme Nikita: She is an assassin, and you can't do that unless it is R-rated. I should have known that Fox would not make an R-rated movie, so it's probably my fault. They denuded it."
In a candid and animated hourlong chat with fans at the Los Angeles Film Festival this week, three science fiction filmmakers discussed turning graphic novels into big-screen extravaganzas, ended up trashing Watchmen and Elektra, shrugged their shoulders about fanboy criticisms and praised director Bryan Singer (of the first two X-Men movies and Superman Returns) for single-handedly turning comic-book movies into mainstream films.
Zak Penn, who admitted to clashing with Singer when working the X2 script, said, "Bryan Singer deserves the credit that we've reached today where movies like Dark Knight are getting nominated for awards. He did the science fiction incarnation of these movies. These are not comic-book scripts; they are science fiction movies that are just based on comic books. And Bryan Singer is no fan of these movies. ... Yet no one else adapts The Matrix or the The Fly better than we do."
Barry Levine of Radical Publishing said he's working with Singer on the big-screen adaptation of Freedom Formula and credited him with bringing a lot to the project. "He is embellishing it, because Bryan has that sensibility," Levine said. "I firmly believe that comics are one thing—and not Gone With the Wind—and the film version is a different medium. At Radical, we do character-driven projects, so we do not see ourselves as competing with Marvel. And we are far from being Disney."
http://scifiwire.com/2009/06/why-comic-book-filmmakers.php
In a candid and animated hourlong chat with fans at the Los Angeles Film Festival this week, three science fiction filmmakers discussed turning graphic novels into big-screen extravaganzas, ended up trashing Watchmen and Elektra, shrugged their shoulders about fanboy criticisms and praised director Bryan Singer (of the first two X-Men movies and Superman Returns) for single-handedly turning comic-book movies into mainstream films.
Zak Penn, who admitted to clashing with Singer when working the X2 script, said, "Bryan Singer deserves the credit that we've reached today where movies like Dark Knight are getting nominated for awards. He did the science fiction incarnation of these movies. These are not comic-book scripts; they are science fiction movies that are just based on comic books. And Bryan Singer is no fan of these movies. ... Yet no one else adapts The Matrix or the The Fly better than we do."
Barry Levine of Radical Publishing said he's working with Singer on the big-screen adaptation of Freedom Formula and credited him with bringing a lot to the project. "He is embellishing it, because Bryan has that sensibility," Levine said. "I firmly believe that comics are one thing—and not Gone With the Wind—and the film version is a different medium. At Radical, we do character-driven projects, so we do not see ourselves as competing with Marvel. And we are far from being Disney."
http://scifiwire.com/2009/06/why-comic-book-filmmakers.php