Now I know what happened to the "Lone Ranger"

I got a newsletter from Dynamite today, and it answers why I haven’t seen a Lone Ranger comic in a while.

ASK DYNAMITE:

Each week, or as available, we’ll pull a letter and answer it here and in our companion podcast, send all letters to: letters@dynamiteentertainment.com) and mark them "ok to print"!

nightwing2372 writes: "I am a Lone Ranger fan and I enjoy your version of the character and I was wondering when the next issue will be coming out. I have every issue up to number 10 and it’s been along time since number 11 should have come out. Can you please let me know what’s happening with the series is it going on or being cancelled or just running late."

The Ranger has always been one of our more challenging books in terms of schedule, but we feel that the end results are more than worth the hiccup here and there… that said, #11 got further off the rails than we could manage, so we’re re-soliciting the issue for an April release and currently hard at work on issues 12-14 and a somewhat regular schedule as a result! In the meantime, check out Lone Ranger and Tonto #1, on sale later this month.

Glad it wasn’t canceled, here is some info on the Lone Ranger and Tonto one-shot: http://www.dynamiteentertainment.com/htmlfiles/p-C108437.html

J. TORRES: INTRODUCING THE FAMILY DYNAMIC – NEWSARAMA

 

J. TORRES: INTRODUCING THE FAMILY DYNAMIC

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As we mentioned in our coverage on Saturday from DC’s RRP meeting, J. Torres will launch a new six issue miniseries in June titled The Family Dynamic. In this case, the title’s a pretty accurate descriptor – Torres’ Family Dynamic is just that – a family of super-heroes.
We spoke with Torres to find out more about the miniseries.

 

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TOLKIEN ESTATE SUES NEW LINE – NEWSARAMA

TOLKIEN ESTATE SUES NEW LINE – NEWSARAMA

TOLKIEN ESTATE SUES NEW LINE

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ALEX VEIGA
AP Business Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) The estate of “Lord of the Rings” creator J.R.R.
Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his
books, claiming the company failed to pay a cut of gross profits for
the blockbuster films.

The writer’s estate, a British charity dubbed The Tolkien Trust, and
original “Lord of the Rings” publisher HarperCollins filed the
lawsuit against New Line Cinema on Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The lawsuit claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross
receipts from the films to Tolkien’s estate and the other plaintiffs. A
call to a spokesman for New Line, a unit of Time Warner Inc., was not
immediately returned.

The films – 2001′s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the
Ring,” 2002′s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” and 2003′s
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” – have reaped nearly
$6 billion combined worldwide, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs seek more than $150 million in compensatory damages,
unspecified punitive damages and a court order giving the Tolkien
estate the right to terminate any rights New Line may have to make
films based on other works by the author, including “The Hobbit.”

Such an order would scuttle plans New Line has in the works to make a two-film prequel based on “The Hobbit.”

“Rings” trilogy director Peter Jackson has already signed on to serve
as executive producer on the project, which is tentatively slated to
begin production next year, with releases planned for 2010 and 2011.

“The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried
unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court,” Steven Maier, an
attorney for the Tolkien estate based in Britain, said in a statement.
“New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its
contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of
gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures.”

Maier also claims the film studio has blocked the Tolkien estate and
the other plaintiffs from auditing the receipts of the last two films.

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Best quote of the day (so far)

I just loved the quote from Jamie Rich over on a post i read at Blog@Newsarama.

When replying to someone stating that “Joey Da Q is close to being the smartest person in comics, Jamie states :

“Being the smartest guy in comics is like being the fattest corpse in the graveyard. It just ain’t that hard.”

Classic!!

FOX SUES WARNER BROS. TO STOP WATCHMEN PRODUCTION

What a bunch of steaming crap.  Typical Fox move if you ask me

FOX SUES WARNER BROS. TO STOP WATCHMEN PRODUCTION – NEWSARAMA

FOX SUES WARNER BROS. TO STOP WATCHMEN PRODUCTION

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According to The Hollywood Reporter, 20th Century Fox filed suit against Warner Bros. last Friday over the rights to the film version of Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Fox claims that it holds the exclusive copyrights and contract rights to the property, and is seeking an injunction to “restrain (Warner Bros. Pictures) from taking actions that violate Fox’s copyrights and which stand to forever impair Fox’s rights to control the distribution and development of this unique work,” this according to the complaint.

Fox’s claim – it still has a hold of a piece of the Watchmen movie franchise, and hasn’t been paid.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

Fox claims that between 1986 and 1990, it acquired all movie rights to the 12-issue DC Comics series and screenplays by Charles McKeown and Sam Hamm. In 1991, Fox assigned some rights via a quitclaim to Largo International with the understanding that the studio held exclusive rights to distribute the first motion picture based on “Watchmen,” according to the lawsuit.

When Largo dismantled, the rights were transferred to producer Lawrence Gordon. Under a “turnaround agreement” between Fox and Gordon, the producer agreed to pay a buy-out price to Fox if he entered into any agreement with another studio or third party to develop or produce “Watchmen,” among other things.

Some historical notes about the above: Sam Hamm was brought in to the film project after Alan Moore declined to write the screenplay of the comic series, and Hamm’s screenplay reportedly changed major elements in the original story, including the ending. The project then moved to Warner Bros. and had Terry Gilliam and Joel Silver attached (with an altered screenplay) – this was the “Arnold Schwarzenegger as Dr. Manhattan” phase of the project’s development. Funding problems and Gilliam’s belief (shared by many fans as well as Moore) that the story was unfilmable saw the project die at Warner Bros. the first time, with the rights going back to Gordon.

In 1996, Gordon and Warner Bros. entered into an agreement, which saw the property moved between Universal (with David Hayter writing and directing), Revolution Studios and Paramount (with Darren Aronofsky, and then later Paul Greengrass directing Hayter’s script) before landing at Warner Bros. with Zack Snyder directing from a screenplay by Alex Tse.

As THR reports, Fox now claims that neither Gordon nor Warner Bros. has paid the buyout price or “advised the studio of any other conditions required under the agreement, including procedures necessary to acquire the rights to Watchmen from Fox.”

Fox is seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit.

Warner Bros. describes the film version of Watchmen as:

A complex, multi-layered mystery adventure, Watchmen is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the “Doomsday Clock” – which charts the USA’s tension with the Soviet Union – is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes. As he reconnects with his former crime-fighting legion – a ragtag group of retired superheroes, only one of whom has true powers – Rorschach glimpses a wide-ranging and disturbing conspiracy with links to their shared past and catastrophic consequences for the future. Their mission is to watch over humanity…but who is watching the watchmen?

The film based on the graphic novel is being directed by Zack Snyder (300) and produced by Lawrence Gordon (Die Hard), Lloyd Levin (United 93) and Deborah Snyder (300), with Herbert W. Gains serving as executive producer.

Playing the film’s core group of “masks,” the masked adventurers at the center of the story, are Malin Akerman (upcoming The Heartbreak Kid) as Laurie Juspeczyk, aka Silk Spectre; Billy Crudup (The Good Shepherd) as Jon Osterman, aka Dr. Manhattan; Matthew Goode (Match Point) as Adrian Veidt, aka Ozymandias; Jackie Earle Haley (Little Children) as Walter Kovacs, aka Rorschach; Jeffrey Dean Morgan (TV’s Grey’s Anatomy) as Edward Blake, aka the Comedian; and Patrick Wilson (Little Children) as Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl.

Watchmen was originally published by DC comics as a 12-comic book series between 1986 and 1987, before subsequently being collected into a trade paperback. It is the only graphic novel to win the prestigious Hugo Award or to be named among Time magazine’s “100 Best English Language Novels from 1923 to the Present.”

Watchmen is currently in production in Vancouver, and is slated to open on March 6th, 2009. The film’s website can be found here.

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DAN DIDIO, GEOFF JOHNS ON DC UNIVERSE #0 & FINAL CRISIS’ PLAN – NEWSARAMA

 

DAN DIDIO, GEOFF JOHNS ON DC UNIVERSE #0 & FINAL CRISIS’ PLAN

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No, no – you’re not missing a convention this weekend.
This weekend is DC’s RRP meeting, a semi-regular meeting between DC and a focus group of direct market retailers. While the bulk of the meetings are taken up with more…retailer-y concerns, the publisher also takes the opportunity to present a look at some of its upcoming editorial plans.
And that’s just what they’re doing.
First up…something called DC Universe #0, which began its “life” as something else altogether. Just prior to DC’s RRP meetings, we spoke with DC Universe Executive Editor Dan DiDio and co-writer Geoff Johns about the many forms this particular issue has taken – and how its final version, which hits in May, was finally decided upon.

 

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