Re: Superman and the Secret Planet -- Great stuff!

"Super-Menace" <fortress@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:110620070005252213%fortress@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What I think will keep "Secret Planet" from ever becoming a
film is the confused rights situation and, maybe more important,
the fact that it didn't originate in-house. They hate that kind of
thing.

The two are related, in the sense that the 50s series, and the
actors/estates having likenesses used, and the Gillis script, and
the Garrett art, and the Nolt site furthering all that, and if they see
the merit in my suggestions/ideas then even this thread, all lead
to rights issues in the broadest sense.

But the AoS DVDs would have had a confused rights situation as
well, until those were worked out. It seems to me an unproduced
script would be less expensive and time consuming to acquire the
rights to. They know who wrote it (Gillis) and presumably who paid
him to write it, the latter perhaps being the same rightsholders who
had to be factored in when they worked out the rights issues on
the AoS DVDs.

As for it not being in-house, they recently bought a Wonder Woman
spec apparently, which was not in-house, and a trade article said
they did so to avoid conflict with what they might be doing or some
such. Other articles and buzz suggested they were planning to use
it instead of Whedon's script, Whedon leaving the project at the
same time this happened.

Leaving aside "Secret Planet" for a moment, what's at the core
of what you're saying is that the Reeves show could be adapted
into an animated feature...

It gets to it tangentially, but no I don't think that's at the core of what
I'm saying. In fact that *could* come across as a complete reverse
engineering bastardization of what I'm saying. I can see why they
might do it, because the industry is always trying to reverse engineer
bastardize what's good so they can capitalize on it. But the essence
of what I'm saying does NOT start or end with the 50s series. For
me, it started clicking on a link in a post I saw in this newsgroup, to
a site (Nolt's) I've rarely been to and not in a while, because the
poster said that there was some illustration or adaptation there
worth looking at. The "great" art point didn't even register, but
when I went there it did. And then I searched around and found
out more.

So I think what's much more at the core of it is Garrett bringing
that Gillis script to life so well, on Nolt's site these last several
years. There's no way I'd be here singing its praises today if
they hadn't done that. I've known about the AoS series for 40
years, since I started watching reruns as a kid, but I'd never in
a million years think "Hey, they should do an animated feature
version of that series..." nor am I sure I'd even be interested in
buying it if that were the pitch. It evokes the Star Trek animated
series, which I never gave a frak about even though I've seen
pretty much every live action episode and movie.

What I find compelling about this is the concept and inspiration
and the unproduced Gillis script and Garrett drawing it and Nolt
having hosted it for years, and I happen to find out about it and
click on the link and it's like "Wow..." as it inspires a vision of
how great this could be. It's the source of it that I think would
be invaluable in the marketing -- the idea that this came from
a talented artist, basically storyboarding an unproduced movie
script, for a beloved TV series that might have got a theatrical
movie 50 years ago. That being used to launch a major new
animated Superman incarnation would be what helps sell it.

Jumping through some hoops to get all the rights issues covered
would be well worth it, and I think central to its marketing. If they
didn't do that, it would come across as ripping off Gillis/Garrett.
It's been perceived as the way Hollywood and publishing does
it in the past. You mentioned Gillis and L&C, DC has had its
problems with Moore and so on. But we're in a different era now
and Warners / DC should know they need to handle it better than
they did 20 years ago when other people may have been in charge.
Maybe that WW script buy illustrates a different mentality, and if
it does I think it can enhance the marketing, PR and word of mouth
and so on, tremendously.


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