Will Eisner Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Cinematical has just received this exclusive final poster for The Spirit, which sports Frank Miller's (300, Sin City) solo directorial debut and stars Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes, Scarlett Johansson, Sarah Paulson and our favorite fangirl, Jaime King. Based on Will Eisner's famed comic book series. The Spirit tells of a rookie cop who returns from the dead to fight crime in the shadows of Central City and square off against the villainous Octopus (Jackson), who kills anyone unlucky enough to see his face ... all the while facing a bevy of beautiful women who either want to seduce, love or kill our masked crusader. Check out a larger version of this poster in the gallery below.



The Spirit is due in theaters on Christmas Day.

Gallery: The Spirit

When he's not covering film for us, Christopher Campbell is out living a bold double life, instead covering film for Spout Blog, and by way of his derring-do, he's come across a relatively watchable bootleg of some of the ill-received Comic-Con footage from The Spirit, and to borrow his incredibly apt reaction: "The scene you heard about is actually worse than you imagined."

Their Kevin Kelly tried to warn us, as did our own Elisabeth Rappe, and the latest trailer brought forth its own wave of doubt, but witnessing it for myself is something else. I can't speak for Will Eisner's original comic-book creation, though a couple of my pals have assured me that Frank Miller's take on the material is pretty far from it, and while I'm down for a Sin City 2, I'd really rather it be a more intentional affair than this likely farce.

Are any of you fans still willing to give this project the benefit of the doubt, or are toilet-smashing gags the new par for the course?

Frank Miller is just blogging like crazy these days. Which is great -- I wish everybody I ever wrote about had a blog, because it would make everything ten times easier and more interesting. No conjecture. Straight from the horse's mouth!

Today, Miller addressed the concerns and criticism directed at the first teaser for The Spirit, mainly centered on its resemblance to the eye-popping Sin City. "It only resembles Sin City in that I am its director, and, well, yes, I have my ways and my proclivities .... No, Sin City, that one's my own baby, folks, and it looks the way it does for its own reasons. The Spirit is, and will always be, Eisner's Spirit .... To drive the point home, The Spirit , despite any accidental impression left by that kickass teaser-trailer, is a full-color movie. Sin City - and I hope to make of it a movie trilogy all its own, come Hell and high water - is, visually, a playhouse for black and white."

And thus begins Hollywood's rediscovery of Golden Age comics. Variety reports that the Creative Artists Agency has landed the rights to Will Eisner's estate, enlisting the late comic book legend as a client.

Their plan is to take Eisner's large library of comic book titles and package them up as movie, television, and other media properties. Interest in all things Eisner has been heating up, due largely to Frank Miller's upcoming adaptation of The Spirit. (And probably due to Eisner and the Spirit always being ever present at San Diego ComicCon, which Hollywood increasingly takes over.)

Obviously, there's no word on what titles are being looked at first, or by whom. I'm curious how diehard Eisner fans will take this -- do they want his titles remaining undiscovered and unsullied by blockbuster movies? Or are they going to jump at the chance to see anything and everything adapted?

Frankly, I'm always happy if original content is being adapted over remaking the movies of the 1980's. I imagine all his noir work will be snapped up first -- and I would be none too sorry to see Lady Luck. Hawks of the Seas would be ten kinds of fun, but I am a sucker for swashbucklers. I hope someone looks at his serious graphic novels -- Contract with God, Family Matters, and The Name of the Game could all be brilliant in the right hands. It will be interesting to see where this deal goes.

And here I was thinking "Wow, we haven't heard much about The Spirit lately."

Frank Miller has posted his third blog on the film's official site and this one finds him full of praise for his cast. "One outstanding reason I am a lucky SOB is because I get to work with beautiful goddesses and gods who also, by the way, can ACT." Miller certainly has lined up a fairly impressive cast -- though even the fanboys are skeptical that Jaime King and Eva Mendes fall into the "great talent" category.

I don't know if it's my compute or the site, but the blog goes blank about halfway through, so if it works for you, you'll have to fill me in on what else Miller says. All in all, his blogs make one hope that Miller directs as well as he writes about directing. . .

Sadly, while he opened the floor to heroic discussion, a look at the forum reveals he never actually stayed to listen. And here I was hoping I'd discovered the secret place where Miller hangs out and talks about bullets, broads, and booze.

I'm not a comic-book reader, so I didn't know much about the subject of Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist before seeing the documentary at Austin Film Festival. I knew he was the creator of The Spirit, a comic-book series that Frank Miller is adapting into a feature film ... and that's about all I knew. Fortunately, the documentary filled in many of the blanks for me about Eisner and provided some interesting details about the artist's life.

Eisner is credited for being one of the pioneers in the comic-book form -- as the film's title indicates, he believed in making the comics sequential, giving them an ongoing storyline, which was not standard back in the 1930s when he started work as an artist. His character The Spirit was not a traditional superhero with crazy superpowers, but an ordinary guy in the smallest of masks, who happened to fight crime. During WWII and afterwards, Eisner created military instructional manuals that were drawn in a comic-book style to make them interesting and easy to understand. Later in life, he created more dramatic, personal comic books (A Contract with God) that he dubbed "graphic novels," and paved the way for this type of work to be taken seriously.

Following up her turn in the comic-book movie Ghost Rider, Eva Mendes has signed on to co-star in another comic adaptation, The Spirit. Based on the classic Will Eisner character, the movie will be written and directed by Frank Miller. Variety reports that Mendes joins a cast that includes Gabriel Macht as the title hero, Samuel L. Jackson as the villainous Octopus and Scarlett Johansson as the Octopus' accomplice, Silken Floss. Although Miller has hinted in the past that the film will feature no love interest -- The Spirit is "a bit of a slut" -- I figured that Johansson would at least serve as the closest thing. Her character would figure well as a femme fatale who seduces and/or ends up falling for The Spirit. So, now how does Mendes' casting fit in? The Hollywood Reporter says the actress is playing a character named Sand Saref, who is described as "a beauty with dangerous curves." The trade further explains her role as the only woman to ever break The Spirit's heart. Saref and Denny Colt (The Spirit's alter ego) were teenage sweethearts before Colt's uncle killed Saref's father. Afterward, Saref entered a life of crime and espionage.

So, I guess The Spirit won't be portrayed as a complete man-whore. According to plot points given at this year's Comic-Con, the film will actually feature a love triangle between The Spirit, Saref and another character named Ellen Dolan, who has yet to be cast. In addition to casting Mendes, Miller has hired a cinematographer for the movie: Bill Pope. The DP is no stranger to comic book movies; he shot Spiderman 2 and 3, as well as Sam Raimi's Darkman (which is like a comic book movie) and Army of Darkness. His greatest and most memorable work, though, would have to be The Matrix trilogy.

Who is ... The Spirit? Gabriel Macht is The Spirit. That's right, Frank Miller has gone with a relative unknown to star in The Spirit, his adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic. Macht actually made his feature film debut 27 years ago (and then took an 18-year hiatus to grow up), and he's been appearing in supporting roles just under the bill since 2001, but he's hardly a household name. TV fans may remember him from NBC's short-lived The Others and moviegoers should recognize him -- if not by name then by face -- from The Good Shepherd, Because I Said So and The Recruit. By the time The Spirit rolls out in 2009, though, Macht may be more familiar. Next year he stars opposite Kate Beckinsdale in Dominic Sena's Whiteout. The actor didn't win the role of the masked crime-fighter by being unknown; he was apparently cast on spot following his audition. Lionsgate head Mike Paseornek is happy with Miller's choice, describing Macht as having a "devilishly charming quality," and he thinks the actor will be able to embody The Spirit throughout a possible franchise.

Miller is scheduled to begin shooting The Spirit in October -- Variety reports he's doing Sin City 2 first, but that doesn't sound right -- so hopefully we'll hear soon about confirmed casting for the film's villain, Octopus. Of course, the character could be played by someone even more unknown than Macht since his face shouldn't actually be seen, but last we heard, Samuel L. Jackson was in talks for the role. For those of you out of the loop, The Spirit is a suit-and-tie-wearing, vigilante hero who was once a detective named Denny Colt before he faked his death to fight crime in Central City. His main nemesis, Octopus, is bent on wiping out the city, killing anyone with the misfortune of seeing his deformed face. The film will reportedly skip over The Spirit's origin and dive right into his adventures. Also The Spirit will apparently be portrayed as "a bit of a slut", so we shouldn't expect any Hollywood-enforced love interest, just a lot of random women.

After struggling through Hollywood for many a moon (he wrote BOTH Robocop sequels!), Frank Miller is officially hot stuff with the studios, based only on a pair of movies: 300, which spawned from his graphic novel, and Sin City, which also came from some of Miller's books, but also marked his co-directorial debut. The celebrated author / artist is about to leap into the director's chair with his very own project, and it's one that he's very passionate about: An adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic book The Spirit.

According to Variety, Lionsgate and Odd Lot Entertainment will bankroll the project, with LG doing the distributing in North America and the UK. For those a little unfamiliar with the character: He's a masked vigilante who does battle with random criminals and a regular nemesis known as The Octopus. Miller considered the late Will Eisner "a dear friend" and a "mentor," so obviously he's going to approach his first solo directorial gig with a lot of care: "Translating his vision to the screen will be a labor of love." Word is that production on The Spirit will be scheduled once Mr. Miller knows when he'll be done on Sin City 2 with Robert Rodriguez. So not only will we be getting a new Frank Miller movie, but this gig might light a fire under the Sin City sequel. And that would be a very good thing.