io9
Try as hard as I might, I just can't avoid wanting to say "The Force is strong with Red5 Comics." The upstart comic publisher - less than a year old, and formed from connections made in Star Wars fandom - has just had their first taste of stardom with the news that Tobey Maguire's production company has plans to make a movie out of Afterburn, their post-apocalyptic treasure hunter book.
The publisher, formed by co-founder of TheForce.net Scott Chitwood and former director of Lucasfilm's StarWars.com, Paul Ens, have the perfect one line pitch for Afterburn (written by Ens and Chitwood): Indiana Jones meets Mad Max. Chitwood explains the premise like this:
In this story, half the Earth is hit by a superflare from the sun. All of Europe, Asia, Africa, India, and Australia are essentially microwaved. People out in the open were killed while the survivors were mutated by the radiation. However, all their treasures remain intact. Our anti-hero, Jake, is a treasure hunter that raids this post-apocalyptic wasteland for profit. It's a pulp adventure filled with big action scenes, unique international settings, and a lot of fun.With a description like that, the most surprising thing is that it's taken almost two months since the first issue was released for this thing to be optioned as a movie...
Toby Maguire in for 'Afterburn' [Hollywood Reporter]
Comments
That....that actually sounds kind of cool.
People dead, but material things left unharmed? Sounds like a hydrogen bomb. Kills all organic things, as compared to an atomic bomb, which goes boom :D
This sounds a lot like roadside picnic with very subtle tweaks. Picnic was adapted into a movie, Stalker, and eventually the movie and the book were reoptioned as a video game, Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl.
This sounds very much like a movie I saw on the sci-fi channel, althought it was about survivors from some horrible plague. This guy was hired by some rich bastard to infiltrate an AI-protected museum to retrieve "art"ifacts. Anyone remember the title?
Anyway the super-flare idea isn't off the wall at all ... people tend to forget that the sun belongs to a type of star called VARIABLE stars. One day it's gonna burp and earth turns into a runaway microwave.
@cde: You mean a NEUTRON bomb.
A Hydrogen Bomb does this:
+ Watch video
@SSJPabs: Well, neutron bombs don't work like that either.
From your wiki link:
This intense burst of high-energy neutrons is intended as the principal mechanism of killing, although a large amount of heat and blast is also produced. A common idea is that a neutron bomb "leaves the infrastructure intact"; however, current designs have yields in the kiloton range,[10] the detonation of which could cause heavy destruction through blast and heat effects. A yield of one kiloton is not much for a nuclear weapon but it is nearly two orders of magnitude (100x) bigger than the most powerful conventional bombs. The blast from a neutron bomb may be enough to level almost any civilian structures inside the lethal radiation range.[11]
@SSJPabs: Then there is the horrible aftermath of the Neutron Bomb with it's high level of radiation sickness which causes people's nervous system to involuntarily affect their muscles creating a dance of some sort. There is a chilling documentary on it.
+ Watch video
Wait...a superflare that microwaves the planet? How did the rest of the planet (and oceans) survive? Plus if most of the world died who is he going to sell these treasures to and how can they afford it?
If this does manage to become a movie it sounds like it will be as exciting as The Core. Except, you know, edgy...what with the anti-hero and all.
It's Friday! Why am I so cynical? I need sleep...
@HJungle: It's like the last Batman film. A water dehydrator device? That won't kill any humans nearby by insta-dehydration, almost ala Batman the Movie, yet it can dehydrate water through 20 stories of free air and another story of concrete and metal piping... ARG!
@Garrison Dean: richard matheson wrote a short story called 'dance of the dead' that was about some college kids going out on the town and ending up at a bar where a dead body doing that kind of dance was a freakshow of sorts.
@HJungle: my first thought when i read the premise was 'what happened to the oceans that were hit.' however it seems obvious that half the planet survived because only roughly half the planet is facing the sun at any given moment.
Amercadia, Amercadia, 'tis true you once were round...
Speaking of which, why hasn't io9 covered Starstruck ? It's SF, it's a comic, it' retro, it was even a cheezy Broadway show...
-Kle.
@tetracycloide: Oooooh, that wasn't what they based that awful ep of Masters of Horror on was it? It had such a good premise, but was horribly executed.
Yup just wiki'd it . Even adapted by Matheson's son. Damn you Tobe Hooper!!! Lifeforce is one of the best movies ever, why won't someone let you make a good movie again.
In anycase it wouldn't hold a candle to the pointer sisters.
@Garrison Dean: I cannot watch that video; is that what they call the St. Vitus Shakes (or the St. Vitus Dance)?
@braak: No it's close, its the St. Foley of Axel tremors.
@Garrison Dean: Yep, radiation sickness is horrible thing, especially when it lingers for a long time before you die if you get a lower dose.
AND
@cde: Look at what I actually wrote "you mean a neutron bomb." The poster clearly meant that, and has the incorrect popular conception. Having read the link long before, and being interested in writing slightly more believable sci-fi stories than Star Wars, I am aware that a neutron bomb isn't harmless to intimate objects. But that's what the guy meant.
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