Avengers, Justice League and Teen Titan Movies? Prove It!

by Edward Gross

One of the things I enjoy doing each morning upon awakening is booting up, logging in and checking out the latest entertainment headlines. Unlike the days of old, there's no reason to wait for the daily newspaper, Daily Variety or news reports from Entertainment Tonight to arrive to update me on what's happening out there and pointing me in the direction of story/interview leads.

The downside to all of this, however, is the fact that every time a studio has an itch for publicity, it makes an announcement of some wild new project that is sure to whet the collective appetite of the fan base surrounding a particular subject.  And in terms of superhero related projects, it seems to be happening more frequently.

This is particularly true for films based on DC characters, for while at this moment Marvel has in release Spider-Man 3 and Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, it's also got Iron Man in production, The Incredible Hulk in pre-production and numerous other properties in active development. But DC doesn’t seem to be faring as well.  Yes, The Dark Knight is in production, the Flash and Wonder Woman are trapped in development hell, there are rumblings but no official announcement of a sequel to Superman Returns, a possible Green Arrow film in development, and so on.

Now the announce-and-wait game is kicking into overdrive with the announcement of no less than three super team movies. This morning, Marvel proclaimed that a live-action version of The Avengers is being put into development, with Zak Penn (Elektra, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk) writing the screenplay. This follows on the heels of DC's announcement of a Teen Titans movie to be written by Mark Verheiden (co-executive producer of Battlestar Galactica, supervising producer of Smallville) and an even earlier announcement of a live-action Justice League, the first draft of which has reportedly been handed in by Kiernan and Michele Mulroney.

Not sure why this is irking me at this moment, but the real question that comes to mind is whether or not these films will actually see the dark of theatres. There are two issues to consider (actually a lot more than two, but it's early and I don't want to have to think that hard). First off, both Superman Returns and Spider-Man 3 cost in excess of $250 million, and one can only imagine what it will cost to bring together all of those different superheroes -- especially by the time they actually do think about going into production, bearing natural inflation in mind. Then, of course, there's a question of credibility. While Bryan Singer did an amazing job of making us believe in the reality of the X-Men (beautifully captured in Wolverine's wry comment about yellow spandex), it's almost impossible to imagine these costumed heroes cavorting around on screen together and not looking dorky. In comics and animation they look great, but any live-action depictions we've seen of several of these characters interacting (the Challenge of the Super Heroes atrocity of the '70s, the recent Justice League TV pilot — accompanying screen grab from which was posted by Beyondhollywood.com) have looked silly at best. And the concern isn't limited to DC characters. Yes, both X-Men and the Fantastic Four look fine, because each of those respective teams are more or less wearing the same outfits. But wil l the same hold true when we’re looking at the members of the Avengers, Teen Titans or Justice League on the big screen as portrayed by real actors in costume? That is the question (well, my question, anyway).

Don’t get me wrong. There is a huge part of me that would genuinely love to see filmmakers achieve the seemingly impossible. At the same time, I feel a certain skepticism over whether or not we’ll actually see these films one way or the other. The announcements of projects like them are always exciting (Joss Whedon writing Wonder Woman is a perfect example), but then there is mounting frustration over their never quite making it to the next stage (Joss Whedon writing Wonder Woman is a perfect example).

In any case, I’ll be up at 5AM tomorrow, booting up, logging in and checking these things once more. Hey, maybe they’ll announce … again.