Fanboys have been doing awfully well out of the cinema of late. With the franchising boom, and the concomitant reclassification of Comic-Con from geek speakeasy to non-ironic cultural staple, they are enjoying an unprecedented day in the sun (or its filament-based equivalent). While major studios have milked the mass-appeal comic for all it is worth (the resurrection of the Spiderman enterprise with the addition of a single superlative was a stroke of marketing genius), yesterday’s announcement that Twentieth Century Fox has landed the film rights to Matt Kindt’s "Mind MGMT" suggests a move deeper into the source material of the comic underworld.
Kindt’s niche but much-admired series follows a young female journalist who stumbles upon a covert government organisation manned by agents with psychic abilities. The protagonist is rescued by an ex-agent who facilitates her investigation into Mind Management’s inner workings (cue ostensible love interest which spills profitably into the real-world Twittersphere à la Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield). After the critically-divisive "Prometheus," producer Ridley Scott, who will be acting under his Fox-affiliated Scott Free banner alongside Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg, will be looking once again to ingratiate himself with this demographic.
If the comic-turned-film model of 2012 is anything to go by, Fox is backing a decent horse to weather the lumbering economic storm. Marvel’s "The Avengers" took in a staggering $1.5bn worldwide to become the third-highest grossing picture of all time after "Avatar" and "Titanic," while "The Dark Knight" and its follow-up "The Dark Knight Rises" both scored in the top twenty. An acquisition from renowned comic publisher Dark Horse, Scott’s adaptation of the shrewdly-selected "Mind MGMT" may prove to be just that. [THR]
