Tumescent film blogger Harry Knowles has a bit of a scoop from when he sat down to talk to Shane Black, occasionally brilliant genre screenwriter (“Lethal Weapon,” “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” “Last Action Hero”) and writer-director of the underrated gem “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (seriously — we just watched this again the other night). It seems that Black has recently been hired by the omnipresent production duo of Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (“Star Trek,” “The Proposal,” pretty much every movie in the next five years) to write a new version of pulp action icon Doc Savage.
Update: Collider says they have it on good authority that Orci and Kurtzman are not the producers here. We’re inclined to believe them if only because we really don’t care for those two.
Doc Savage was a pulp fiction hero, appearing in books, comics, radio programs, magazines and movies. He was created by publisher Henry Ralson and editor John L Nanovic, but is most famously known by the works brought to life by writer Lester Dent. Savage is a nearly superman renaissance man (he’s a scientist, adventurer, etc.) who always finds himself in outlandish situations.
His most famous cinematic incarnation so far was in George Pal’s 1975 camp romp “Doc Savage: Man of Bronze” (we recently watched this again thanks to the wonderful Warner Bros. Archive and boy is it lousy). There was talk in the late 1990’s of a new Doc Savage movie, to be produced by the “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” (yeah we went there) duo of Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the title role (no, really). Schwarzenegger’s desire to ruin California as the great state’s governor ultimately killed the project.
Shane Black confirmed that the movie would be period, set in the 1930’s. Harry Knowles, of course, gushed about this fan boyish detail, but we can’t help but remind Knowles of the number of fantastical period action movies, based on pulp fiction heroes, that have failed both critically and commercially — “The Rocketeer,” “The Shadow,” “The Phantom,” “Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,” the list goes on and on and fucking on. Maybe Guy Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” will turn that around, but we’re doubtful.
If anybody does have the chutzpah to bring this property to life with the right mix of brains and brawn, it’s Black and his co-conspirators. [AICN] – Drew Taylor