Oni Press Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I am appalled this awesome little news item slipped past my radar, and even more upset that I am just now hearing that Rashida Jones has a comic book called Frenemy of the State at Oni Press. As if that isn't neat enough, Variety reports that Frenemy has just been optioned by Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment. I mean, a comic book that's not only penned by a woman, but stars a young woman is actually being optioned. It's the stuff geek girl dreams are made of.

But I'm jumping the gun a little here, because if you're as out of the loop as I was, you don't know what Frenemy of the State is about. It stars a young heiress who works undercover for the CIA, and was described at ComicCon as "What if Paris Hilton was a spy?" But Jones describes the heroine as being a little classier than that: "She has lived a life of privilege, attended the best schools and learned every language, but her obsession with spying on exes gets her into trouble and she is recruited to be a spy in exchange for not going to prison. There is a comic element to it, this girl who is so conscious of social standing and wearing the right shoes, suddenly becoming responsible for these dangerous, life-threatening missions." If that sounds a bit drippy, remember that Lara Croft started off as a careless young heiress too, until she discovered the thrill of artifacts and firearms.

This story simultaneously has thrilled me, and left me ashamed. But let's start with the thrilling part first. Somewhere in all the many comics that are bought up and hoarded by studios big and small, Fox actually bought Greg Rucka's Queen and Country. What makes rather unbelievable is that Queen and Country isn't about a superhero, or manly monster hunter. It's a series centered around a woman who is an operative of the SIS, aka MI6. We're talking a lady James Bond. Since when has Hollywood thought that would fly?

Well, someone at Fox is brave enough to give an action heroine a chance. The studio has done more than option Rucka's comic, as The Hollywood Reporter says that they've hired Ryan Condal to bring Tara Chace to life. You couldn't ask for a better choice, as Condal has solid credentials at DC and Marvel, including a stint with Wonder Woman. Condal's Galahad script also landed on the Black List of awesome, unproduced work. So, Queen is getting the royal pre-production treatment, and should be able to lure in even more when the script is all ready and polished.

Now comes the shame -- I still haven't read Queen and Country, as I was waiting for it to wrap up, and then just completely forgot to pick it up. (I think I held it in my hand this year at ComicCon which makes me feel even worse.) I will rectify this immediately so I can howl with outrage or cheer with delight when they cast Tara Chace.

It's a scary thing when I can barely remember where I left my cell phone, but I go "Billy Smoke? I did a story on that last year." Back then it only had Matthew Fox attached, but now it has a director. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jeffery Nachmanoff has signed on to direct the adaptation of B. Clay Moore's comic series. This will be his second director gig, the first being the moderately received thriller Traitor.

Smoke centers not on the black monster of LOST fame, but on a top-of-the-line hitman who narrowly escapes a botched job. The brush with death sends him in search of redemption, and he decides the only way to find it is to kill all the assassins of the world. Pretty tall order. Moore's series is still awaiting publication -- a thread on Oni Press is giving a date of April 2010. The author says Warner Bros is "seriously jazzed about this one" and that the project is moving quickly.

It's difficult to judge it without even a preview of the book, but given the comic adaptations Warner Bros has been putting out, let's give this one our full attention and see what comes of it. Is it possible that by 2010 or 2011 Fox will be a major action star in his own right, the days of LOST and Party of Five behind him? You never know.

After the unpleasantness that was You, Me and Dupree, Anthony and Joe Russo are looking to explore a different kind of darkness -- the gritty and corrupt city of Ciudad del Este. According to Variety, they're set to direct Ciudad, which will be based on a graphic novel they're writing for Oni Press.

The story will follow a battered hostage negotiator, who travels to Paraguay and the above mentioned city to rescue a kidnap victim. They've been researching the story for years, traveling to crime-infested cities across the world to flesh it out more. Ciudad del Este is next on the travel agenda, a city labeled by the U.S. government as "a threat to national security" that shelters terrorists, drug runners, and all manner of scary people. So stay safe, you two.

The brothers are said to be aiming for a return to their indie roots with this one -- they were formerly behind Pieces, and the seedy George Clooney outing Welcome to Collinwood. (That's a bit of a lost film, isn't it? Weren't those the days when people were still screaming he should have stayed on ER? How things change.) I wish I could say more, but the graphic novel won't be out until 2009, and there's nary a preview on Oni's website. All we can do at this point is give them props for their research, wonder if George Clooney liked them enough to play the weary hostage negotiator, and make glib comparisons to Proof of Life or even Man on Fire.

That's no typo -- in Antony Johnson's graphic novel Julius, the classic William Shakespeare play gets rewritten into modern, Guy Ritchie London where Julius is shot down by Brett, Cassidy, Dennis, Steve, Lee, and Kostas. And according to The Hollywood Reporter, it's just been optioned by Mandalay Pictures.

Julius is the story of a London crime king named Julius, who is worshipped by the public as if he's royalty. His closest fellow gangsters conspire against him and eventually shoot him up. Oops, too late to add a spoiler alert. I imagine that instead of Roman civil war, Julius' death leads to open gang war.

The movie already has its director in F. Gary Gray, and Oni Press, who is becoming ever more omnipotent, will be executive producing via their entertainment shingle, Closed on Mondays.

Oni Press has a five-page preview of the book up for your enjoyment. Reviews praise the dialogue as a mix of Shakespeare and modern British slang, but I can't say that a lot of this shows up in the preview. A "guv'nor" here and there just doesn't sell that to me, and Mark Antony still sounds more like a Shakespearean actor than a London criminal. Perhaps it gets better on page six, but I think I would rather see the real Julius Caesar remade, Master Will's lines intact, by Guy Ritchie or Martin McDonagh. What about you?

According to Variety, Matthew Fox is in talks to play the title character in Warner Bros' Billy Smoke, an adaptation of Oni Press's newest comic book series. Don't feel bad if you're wondering who the hell Billy Smoke is, and why you can't keep up with comic books these days -- it won't be published until next year. Oni Press doesn't even have a preview of it up, so we can't judge it based on six pages.

However, the story goes a little something like this: Smoke is an elite hit man, who is nearly killed during a botched job. He has a change of heart, and realizes that his only way to find redemption is to rid the world of all assassins. It's waking up the ghost of another film in my brain, but I'll be damned if I can remember what it is. Readers?

The series is being written by by B. Clay Moore, who already has racked up some luck in the movie business. His graphic novel, Leading Man, was recently optioned by Universal. And yes, that too is published by Oni Press. I'm a little worried they are actually taking over Hollywood, as this is the fifth book of theirs to be optioned by a studio. The Last Call was bought just last week. I'm not sure what titles are even left to buy at this point -- may I nominate Polly and the Pirates?

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oni Press just inked another deal with Universal. This time, it is for The Last Call, a two volume series by Vasilis Lolos. The adaptation will be penned by Evan Spiliotopoulos.

The story is a horror-adventure about two young teens who are out for a joyride in a stolen car, when they are struck by a "ghost train." The train is responsible for ferrying departed souls from one dimension to another, and the boys find themselves in a bit of trouble when they are caught riding without a ticket. In trying to escape, they find themselves embroiled in a mystery that, if solved, may allow them to return to the living.

Only the date of this convinces me I haven't written it up before, it seems so weirdly familiar. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Universal has optioned Oni Press' Resurrection, the third title the studio has snagged from the small publisher.

Penned by Marc Guggenheim, a Wolverine scribe and the writer behind the television series Eli Stone, Resurrection is the story of a post alien invasion Earth. It begins where most sci-fi movies end, with a group of survivors trying to retake and rebuild the planet.

There's an eleven page preview of issue #1 over on Oni's website, full of those usual issue-one hints -- apparently there was a human counterattack of some kind, and we're reduced to communicating via smoke signals. It looks like the series is going to end at six issues, which is like the magic number these days. Eleven pages is just not enough to go on for me -- I can't help but compare it to The Stand (which I caught again on that Sci-Fi Channel broadcast), and it doesn't hook me as well as eleven minutes of that, but that is hardly fair.

No word on director or release date. These post-apocalyptic stories are really the rage -- thank goodness for the cuddly comfort that is The Hobbit, or I am going to be having nightmares for weeks. Alien invasion movies and me are not a good mix.

It's only been a week since we heard McG got a new production deal with Warner Bros., but the fast-food-sounding-filmmaker is already stacking up a nice slate of projects. The plan, though, is for McG's Wonderland Sound and Vision to make three films a year for WB. First was Nightcrawlers, second was Yucatan and now third is Maintenance, an adaptation of the Oni Press comic book created by Jim Massey. The series follows two janitors who work for a weapons manufacturer called TerroMax, which supplies to the world's most evil super villains. And sometimes the duo actually have to step in and save the world. Though the look of the characters reminds me of Super Mario Bros., the setup makes me think of the contractors working on the Death Star -- I'm sure you've heard the monologue from Clerks -- and how these janitors are like the poor guys working for Darth Vader -- which means they should similarly know better than to become employed by the bad guys.

Anyway, without over-analyzing the concept, Maintenance does seem like a cute idea, and I'm sure it will make for an entertaining movie, maybe even a franchise. There's a slight chance that McG himself will direct the adaptation, currently being scripted by Joe Ballarini (writer of next year's zombie-prom horror pic Dance of the Dead). Whether or not McG decides to make this his one to direct for this year (instead of Yucatan), he has big shoes he wants the thing to fill. Basically he wants to make Maintenance the next Back to the Future or Raiders of the Lost Ark, a movie "based on action, comedy and ground-breaking special effects." That's a steep goal for the man who gave us the two Charlie's Angels pics, but I'd like to believe it. At least it seems possible for this to be the next Men in Black. I'll let you decide for yourself, though, without even having to visit your local comic vendor. Check out this 32-page preview of the series' first issue and let me know your own thoughts. Personally, I was bored after the first ten panels. But I think I would have been really into it about ten years ago.

I guess things are starting to gear up in earnest now In San Diego so that means we're going to be seeing more and more casting, deals and other news over the next four days. Hold on as I think its going to get a little bit crazy. After all, its is Comic-Con. Some recent news to hit Variety concerns Dreamworks' acquisition of two properties from Portland-based comic book and graphic novel publisher Oni Press.

According to the article, Dreamworks grabbed the rights to the Oni titles The Dammed and Courtney Crumrin for Producers Walter Parkes, Laurie McDonald and Eric Gitter at Closed on Mondays productions. No word yet on who will adapt the graphic novels for the screen or sit in the director's chair for the films. In case you're not familiar with the two series The Dammed, written by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, concerns two rival gangs who must join forces to defeat a new and more terrifying evil that's invaded their town: a roving pack of demons.

Courtney Crumrin, a series written and illustrated by Ted Naifeh, consisting of 12 comic books compiled into three graphic novels revolves around a charming misfit who finds solace in her uncle's magical library after her social climbing parents uproot her and take her to live in her uncle's reportedly haunted house. I haven't read much of Crumrin but I'm a big fan of The Dammed so I'm pretty excited to hear Oni's getting the chance to have it on the big screen. I can't wait to see who ends up writing and directing the films as well as who eventually is cast. Maybe we'll even find out some more info over the next couple days? Hey, it is Comic-Con so really, anything is possible.