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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

We Don't Need Another Hero

The comic book flick Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam has officially died according to scripter John August:

In his latest blog entry, August said that a number of factors came together and essentially killed the project.

"When we turned the new draft in to the studio, we got a reaction that made me wonder if anyone at Warners had actually read previous drafts or the associated notes. The studio felt the movie played too young. They wanted edgier. They wanted Billy [Batson] to be older. They wanted Black Adam to appear much earlier. (I pointed out that Black Adam appears on page one, but never got a response)"



But August places most of the blame squarely on the studio's Summer '08 line-up and the failure of "Speed Racer " and the success of "The Dark Knight".

"The first flopped; the second triumphed. Given only those two examples, one can understand why a studio might wish for their movies to be more like the latter. But to do so ignores the success of Iron Man, which spent most of its running time as a comedic origin story, and the even more pertinent example of WB’s own Harry Potter series. I tried to make this case, to no avail"

As recently as November the studio issued a press release saying the film was still set to go with Peter Segal calling action....

The studio is skiddish over non-Bat comic book films as evidenced by thier handling of Superman: Man of Steel and the Watchmen lawsuit and want TDK success from every genre flick--But not every superhero warrants a dark tone...

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