boom entertainment Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Boom! Studios is really experiencing a ... well, you know. According to The Hollywood Reporter, they just sold the rights to James L. White's five part comic series Hunter's Moon. Mekhi Phifer is set to star and co-produce the film, along with Boom! Entertainment, the studio's film shingle. White is in negotiations to adapt his graphic novel, and it will be his first screenplay since Ray.

Phifer plays a stockbroker, Lincoln Greer, who is looking forward to a hot date at a remote cabin, but gets stuck with his teenage son instead. The pair go on a weekend hunting trip, but the son is kidnapped. In order to save his kid, Greer is forced to obey his captor's demands, but soon finds matters complicated by being the only African-American in a small logging town.

There's shades of Ransom and Shattered in the plot description -- Ransom with racial tension. Maybe I am just feeling grumpy (and I haven't read the book), but I wish that the graphic novels being snapped up would have a real unique spark. There are so many good ones out there that it is disappointing to see the standard action thriller being bought up again and again. Still, the racial angle gives this some promise, and it is supposed to have a twist ending -- so best not to be too hasty.

Odds and ends from Friday:

• Though the President has left the building, he's currently making plans to stick around town a little while longer. Martin Sheen, who played TV President on The West Wing, will take on a role in the film Talk to Me for Focus Features. Pic, which will be set in 1960s Washington D.C., tells the real-life story of a radio station owner (Sheen) who hires controversial black on-air personality Ralph Waldo "Petey" Green (Don Cheadle). Green would ultimately go on to be somewhat of an icon in radio at a time when racial tension was at its peak across the country.
• Universal Pictures have teamed up with Boom Entertainment to bring the horror comic book Tag to the big screen. Talk about an intense and deadly way to play the game tag, story revolves around some average Joe who, while out with his girlfriend one night, falls victim to an ancient curse when a random stranger "tags" him. The curse makes it so this poor dude slowly begins to die, his body literally decomposing, forcing him to either give up and move on to a higher place or find someone else to pass on the curse to. Yikes, imagine explaining that one to your girlfriend: "Um, honey, I'm dying to see you tonight but, well, I'm actually dying ... so, yeah -- rain check?"
• Luc Besson is one of those directors who likes to float somewhere between worlds of crime and fantasy, giving us films like The Fifth Element, La Femme Nikita, Angel-A and the upcoming Arthur and the Minimoys. While Fifth Element was probably his most commercial hit here in the States, Besson's Léon (or The Professional) has garnered a large following and some think it's his best film. Besson recently squashed rumors of a sequel to Léon saying he has no plans to make one and is pissed people keep sending him scripts for an idea that's not theirs. He does admit, however, if there is going to be a sequel, he will write it. Damn, I guess my script for The Not So Professional will have to remain in my draw, where it belongs.