mardi 2 juin 2015

Marvel Working With Netflix and ABC on Additional Series.

From Umberto Gonzales

http://ift.tt/1KLwVBo

Allegedly, Netflix want more Marvel series and want to work with Marvel on Punisher, Blade and Ghost Rider but Netflix are concerned that these characters are too violent and two of them have supernatural elements. That along with the sheer cost of bringing Ghost Rider to life.

Personally, I share Netflix's concern about the cost of Ghost Rider. That's the only R-rated IP Marvel own which requires a film budget and clearly their biggest box office draw for Phase 4 after Thunderbolts. I'd go full splatter film with it and pepper it with dark humor.

The other two SHOULD be brought to Netflix. Blade has a great supporting cast and rogues gallery which were barely even touched on in the films. For instance, we got a Dracula In Name Only and Doctor Sun didn't appear at all. Then there's the Lucas Cross arc which came out after the films. Plus, with a TV series as opposed to a film, we can get some episodes from Dracula's point of view.

Punisher is a character to be concerned about being too violent. At a time when the public is concerned about police brutality, a series about a vigilante who guns down crooks even as they surrender is going to be a hard sell. The only options are

1. Toning him down, at which point he'll stop being unique as a character and the target audience of Dexter fans won't like Punisher as much as they liked Dexter.

2. Making him deliberately unlikable. At this point, the violence would be intentionally distasteful with Frank Castle strangling a suspect as he pleads, "I can't breathe" and Frank replies with, "**** your breath" as an allusion to real world excessive force. The problem with this take is that there's nobody left to root for. Look at the reception to the recent video game Hatred. Hatred is viewed as a being, bleak, childish and deeply unlikable. I'm not sure if making Frank just as bad, if not worse than who he fights is going to get him to sell to today's audiences. We might be able to empathize with Frank, but going full Garth Ennis means we won't be able to sympathize.

Either way, I'm not really sure if Punisher is appealing to 2015 America. I'm not even sure if he works as escapist fantasy until police shootings of unarmed suspects go down.

However, I would like to see Moon Knight and Elektra. Moon Knight is willing to kill and one of his defining moments is cutting a man's face off and carrying it with him but he's a far more likable character than Punisher since he still has a core morality and lines he won't cross. Plus he fits a TV show better than he does a film since his schizophrenia would make him an unreliable narrator. We'd get events getting retconned with each episode to the point where an entire season is an acid trip.

Elektra is an assassin but she is also focused on combating The Hand. I'd also like the story where a Hand operative is running for President, Garrett would need to be changed to Deathlok as the reprogrammed SHIELD cyborg for obvious reasons but Elektra is one of Marvel's best characters and deserves her own series.

As for the ABC series. I can't speak to Cloak and Dagger as they're not characters I've ever followed. A Ms. Marvel series before Captain Marvel hits theaters would be a disaster considering that Kamala Kahn's entire inspiration is Carol Danvers. A Hulk prequel would fail for a very obvious reason. The only two villains who can work on a TV budget are Mister Hyde (who has his origins on Agents of SHIELD and is already tied to a weekly series) and Mercy along with Thunderbolt Ross who will never becoming Red Hulk since this is a prequel and we won't get Leader or Abomination since Sterns and Blonsky both had their origins during TIH. Even if the effects for Hulk can work, look at who he fights. ZZZAAAXX may work with TV-level CGI and Armageddon may work with a lot of prosthetic work but they're both big maybes or else they'll look cheap with Hulk himself eating up most of the budget. The ones who can't be done are Flux, Ravage, Madman, Half-Life, Maestro and the entire Gamma Corps. So I really, really hope you like Mercy as she'll be the only major villain from the comics. The other problem is Hulk himself since in order to keep production values high, we're looking at a lot less Savage Hulk, no Professor or Worldbreaker and the series being a crime series featuring an evil Hulk named Joe Fixit working for the mob in Vegas since Joe Fixit is smaller and can easily be a bodybuilder in grey body paint.

If Marvel and ABC really want a Hulk TV show with Mark Ruffalo, the best ways to do it are with She-Hulk with Hulk sometimes guest starring as Banner since She-Hulk can be done with green body paint and TV-level special effects which would look cheesy would fit the tone since She-Hulk is a at it's core, a comedy series. Think a legal comedy series with all sorts of minor bit players from the comics as plaintiffs and defendants in property damage court while Jen Walters is forced to negotiate with Damage Control and every few episodes fight Titania and the Wrecking Crew. She breaks the fourth wall, snarks and gets in absolutely crazy situations. How can Marvel not do a She-Hulk show?

The other option is to make Ruffalo a main cast member with the West Coast Avengers in Avengers Academy. It'll mostly be a teen show with members drawn from both Young Avengers and Avengers Academy but it'll also have many cast members who aren't getting their own film in Phase 3 like Don Cheadle, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr, Michael Douglass, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly as the faculty. They'll all be done in Early 2017 anyway. Set it in The Works which would be stated to be near Tony Stark's mansion in Malibu, California and use some of the cheesier, older villains who would never work in another series like Porcupine or Melter.


Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire