NealH.Moritz Tagged Articles at Cinematical

We all know nothing is immune to the clanking, grinding, perpetual remake machine that is Hollywood, but I'm actually a little shocked that it's taken this long for a studio to push along a remake of Russel Mulcahy's 1986 action-fantasy hybrid film Highlander. If much maligned '80s horror films like the House on Sorority Row can muster a remake, surely a franchise as storied as Highlander should be an easy target for a studio re-imagining. Five films, three television series and more comic books and novels than I care to count have been born from Mulcahy's film, and now we can add a new film from Summit Entertainment directed by Justin Lin and produced by Neil H. Moritz to the list.

Lin and Moritz were the same director-producer combo that brought on the money-making fourth installment of Fast & Furious earlier this year, making the duo an easy choice for Summit to entrust their hopeful franchise-restart to. And if hiring broad-appeal filmmakers like Lin and Moritz has you worrying for the state of a new Highlander, you should also know that Summit is bringing in Iron Man screenwriters Art Marcum and Matt Holloway.

And for Highlander lore purists, the studio hasn't shown any inclination of altering the plot, which the press release announcing the news still describes as, "after centuries of dueling to survive against others like him, Connor MacLeod, an immortal Scottish swordsman must confront the last of his kind, a murderously brutal barbarian, who lusts for the fabled Prize."

There's no word yet on who will play Connor MacLeod, the character who famously shouts, "There can be only one!", but I think it's safe to say that an uberproducer like Neal H. Moritz, whose been involved with everything from I am Legend to the upcoming Green Hornet, will be attracting all manner of Hollywood hunks eager to don a kilt and start chopping some heads off.

In the never-ending race to land the next hot comic property, Columbia has just purchased the rights to Garth Ennis' comic series The Boys. The studio will be adapting the series into a film with producer Neal H. Mortiz under his Sony-based Original Pictures company.

The Boys follows a CIA group assigned to keep tabs on superheroes and, when necessary, take violent action against them. Typical of Ennis, it's chock full of graphic violence and sexuality, and happily mocks the Marvel and DC pantheon of heroes.

Moritz, while enthusiastic, seems unaware of how black it is. "Rather than begin with a romantic idea of superheroes out to save the world, The Boys imagines a world in which superheroes really exist, with all of the flaws that real people have. The boys are there to make sure that people with superhuman powers don't get out of line."

I can't shake the feeling that Moritz heard about Watchmen, realized Warner Bros already had it, and asked an intern to find him something with flawed superheroes. Deconstructed superheroes are going to be all the rage in Hollywood now, 20 years after Alan Moore and Frank Miller have been there, done that.

Wow, I sound cynical. I don't mean to. Any original story that a studio picks up is a good thing, and a world where comic books are the hottest thing going is undeniably fun. But will Ennis make it to the screen with all that gleeful brutality and contempt intact? Or will it be neutered into a ordinary action movie?