The 1990s were a pretty weak time for movies based on both video games and superhero comics. On the video game side, there were Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter and a couple of Mortal Kombat films. And on the superhero front, Batman acted out the law of diminishing returns. And that was about it. (I'm going to pretend Steel didn't exist.)

And then in the 2000s, CG visual effects caught up to the amazing superpowered spectacles that comics and games had led us to expect. In 2000, Bryan Singer, well-regarded director of The Usual Suspects, directed X-Men, which was a huge success. And the floodgates of superhero movies opened. Meanwhile, we got movies based on Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, and a ton of others.

But superhero movies have vastly outgrossed video-game movies, according to Box Office Mojo: $7.2 billion to $900 million. (And to be fair, the site lists 77 superhero films, and only 28 video-game films.) Not only that, but directors like Singer, Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, Jon Favreau and Ang Lee have been willing to venture into superhero films. By contrast, the most well-known video-game directors are people like Paul W.S. Anderson, and... Uwe Boll.

Why is this? There seem to be a few reasons. For one thing, many of the most successful video games haven't yet made the leap to movies. Neill Blomkamp's Halo film could have been the X-Men of video-game movies, but it fell apart. Ditto for Gore Verbinski's BioShock movie, which seems to have stalled out due to budgetary concerns.

And it's possible that translating video games to movies requires a higher level of CG mastery than translating comic books — the CG renditions of superhero comics just have to live up to our memories of 2-D pen-and-ink drawings. A live-action CG rendition of a video game, meanwhile, has to look cooler than the already impressive computer graphics most games serve up these days.

But also, movie adaptations of video-game films have generally employed the same kinds of story logic you used to see in the Joel Schumacher Batman films. Like, really — the Doom film, which featured evil alien parasites whose tongues could tell if you were genetically evil or not. Let me just repeat that: They had tongues that could genetically scan you and figure out if you were evil. No superhero movie in the past decade has shown that level of disrespect for the audience or the material. Sure, the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil films were a lot better — but even the mediocre superhero films showed a certain commitment to telling a semi-coherent story. Most comic-book heroes have decades of stories in the bank, however contradictory and full of holes, and the films have gotten slightly better about drawing on them.

But maybe the crux of it is that superhero films learned the difference between respect for the format, and respect for the characters. In some superhero films earlier in the decade, you saw some half-assed attempts at making "comic book panels" and captions on the screen — this was especially heinous in Ang Lee's Hulk. But as the decade went on, superhero films learned that the format wasn't what made these worlds awesome. Meanwhile, even as video games became more cinematic, the movies based on them haven't been able to distinguish between paying homage to video-game action, versus translating it to the different format.

But the other thing that becomes apparent, after you look at all of the superhero and video-game films of the past decade, is that the overall level of quality of both has been pretty bad. For every X-Men 2, Spider-Man or The Dark Knight, there are plenty of films like X-Men 3, Wolverine, Catwoman, Daredevil, and so on. Uwe Boll would have to work overtime and weekends to make a film half as bad as Catwoman. Superhero movies have won, in part, due to sheer quantity — if you generate a large enough mountain of crap, some good stuff will rise out of it. But also, a movie doesn't have to be good to make ten squillion quatloos.

But one thing's for sure: The House That Bryan Singer Built won't stand forever. Something's going to come along and knock superhero movies off their perch, establishing a new Hollywood feeding frenzy. Will it be video-game films? Maybe, if the ten video game movies that are in the pipeline actually get made, and achieve Dark Knight/Iron Man levels of success. It really only takes one movie to make half a billion dollars to turn on the firehose of copycats and sequels.

And even though Avatar isn't based on a video game, it's enough like a video game that if it has a strong enough second and third weekend, you could see the gears (of war) turning in the studio execs' heads. Avatar could turn out to be the movie that supercharged the video-game movie genre, since its strengths can so easily translate to recreating Dead Space or Bioshock. And of course if Tron Legacy does gangbusters next year, it could also provide a shot in the arm.

But right now, the up-and-coming genre seems to be toy movies instead. The two Transformers movies did superhero numbers, and appealed to a similar sense of nostalgia and escapism to superheroes. And there are tons and tons of toys out there waiting for their moment on the big screen — and unlike video-game companies, toy companies don't have any concerns about making sure the movies do justice to their existing stories. A toy movie doesn't have to tie in with existing continuity or jibe with the stories that have already told. A toy movie has one purpose only: To sell toys.

And that means toy movies can be dumber, and yet also more spectacular, than superhero films and video-game films combined. Just look at the Transformers films — they're so overstuffed and bloated with nonsense, they can barely move, but they have the power to spew crap for miles in all directions. And now there are films based on Monopoly, Battleship, Viewmaster, Stretch Armstrong, Battle Bots, and countless others on the way. Actual directors, like Ridley Scott (Monopoly) and Peter Berg (Battleship), are signing on to these projects.

Toy movies could well win out in the next decade, because the key to success will be casting the widest net for nostalgia among adults aged 18-49. Everybody feels vaguely nostalgic for Monopoly or Battleship — and it's just a matter of time before we get Steven Spielberg's Sorry! or David Lynch's Yahtzee. It's like the perfect combination: Everybody feels nostalgic, but nobody will complain that they got it wrong. How on Earth do you get a Yahtzee movie wrong?

It already seems like we're maxed out on superhero films, when Warner Bros. puts the kibosh on Superman and Wonder Woman movies and a Green Lantern film starring "it" boy Ryan Reynolds struggles to get made. If Marvel follows through on its plans to put out four movies a year, we could discover just how many superheroic origins the movie-going audience can stand. So maybe we'll see more of a blend of action/nostalgia pics, with films based on comics, toys, video games and other sources. Or maybe toy movies will just crush every other film genre, until there's nothing but massive CG recreations of your old plastic playthings, as far as the eye can see.

It's tempting to just leave it with a cheap shot and say "Have you seen Valkyrie?" but our concern for First Class is slightly more genuine than that. We'll grant you that Singer's first two entries in the X franchise are easily the best two movies in the series to date, and also that he clearly has a lot of love for the characters. We just don't think that he should've come back, is all.

We can see why Singer would be tempted by the lure of returning to the X-Men movies; not only were they arguably his creative highpoint outside of The Usual Suspects, but they were clearly his financial highpoint (Compare X2's $85,558,731 opening weekend with Superman Returns' $52,535,096 - the latter, in fact, is even lower than X-Men's opening, despite the first X-Men movie having to deal with lower awareness than the first movie featuring one of the most well-known fictional characters in over a decade). As his other projects seemingly stall for one reason or another - Remember his Logan's Run remake? Or, from earlier this year, his Battlestar Galactica movie reboot? - there has to be a sense of security in returning to an already successful franchise and the adoration of millions of fans for whom his work is the benchmark of quality. But those expectations become a double-edged sword (Quadruple-edged? There are two separate sets of expectations, after all): Charged with not only maintaining the financial success of the franchise but also reigniting hardcore fan excitement for it, Singer has landed himself in a high-profile situation very unlike what the one he was in first time around. All sets of eyes will be on his every move, not just comic fans critical that Wolverine is too tall and not Canadian. How would Singer react if Richard Donner visited to make sure the franchise was being maintained in the proper manner, as he did for X-Men Origins: Wolverine director Gavin Hood? What happens if Singer's ideas for First Class don't fit in with any of the other movies being simultaneously developed for the franchise?

It sounds both trite and obvious, but X-Men as a concept is about evolution, not devolution. Sure, it's also a civil rights metaphor and a superhero story, but at the heart of it is the idea of coming to terms with something new and different, even if (especially if) that something new and different had previously been something as familiar as ourselves or our loved ones. With that in mind, bringing Singer back to the franchise seems counter-intuitive at best. We've already seen what he thinks of the characters and is capable of; why can't someone else play with the toys and bring something else to them now?

It would be different if X-Men: First Class hasn't been revealed to be exactly the prequel that it sounds like - According to Singer himself, the movie will focus on

the formative years of Xavier and Magneto, and the formation of the school and where there relationship took a wrong turn... There is a romantic element, and some of the mutants from 'X-Men' will figure into the plot, though I don't want to say which ones.

- but knowing that it is just the backstory to what we've already seen (like X-Men Origins: Wolverine, as well; It's worth wondering why Fox seems scared to make movies set after X-Men: The Last Stand. Yes, it was a bad movie, but that bad?) saps the possibility of true surprise. We know where the main characters end up, even if we hadn't read the original comics. Hiding in the past and clinging onto what you know may sum up the attitude of most of those making X-Men comics for the last two decades, but that doesn't mean that it's not missing the point of the story they're supposed to be telling.

(Selfishly, we would much rather have seen Josh Schwartz' take on the idea, now sadly dumped to make way for Singer. Not only is he new to the franchise, but his other work - be it The OC, Chuck or Gossip Girl - suggests that he could've brought a new tone to the movies, a lighter one that could also be more in tune with the teen characters First Class is said to feature in addition to the younger Xavier and Magneto. Somewhere, there's probably a great script out there...)

We're not doubting that Singer's First Class will be a financial success - He's not a bad filmmaker, after all, and if the franchise is strong enough for The Last Stand to be a massive hit, it's unlikely he could sink it unless he was really trying - but, in terms of the quality of the movie? We kind of wish he'd passed, realized that he'd done his part already, and moved on to fresher pastures, allowing someone else to take the wheel. As it is, he's setting himself - and us - up for the possibility of disappointment and frustration. They say you can't go home again for a reason, after all.

Bryan Singer spilled the beans to Ustream that he has just signed on to direct the next X-Men origin tale:

We're not incredibly surprised by this move — he's been hinting at getting back involved with the X-Men series for months. Plus he made the only two X-Men films that didn't make us want to run through a plate-glass window. The director knows the characters and will at least attempt to make an engaging film. He even admitted to talking with Hugh Jackman, an incredibly invested actor in the franchise, about Wolverine.

But will it take place way, way, way back in the early days of the X-Men, as the rumors and comics source material would lead us to believe? Lauren Shuler Donner, X-Men Producer, has said very little on the matter, but did admit to Comic Book Movie that it was "way back when." But was mum on characters. Still, it's a safe bet that fleshing the past lives of the characters out would easily set up additional spin-off movies for each individual X-Man. Come on Iceman movie!

Bay, Kurtzman and Orci's Batman
Pros: You'd get a new Batman movie every two years, even if Michael Bay would complain and tell people that he didn't want to make it but the studio offered him so much money he couldn't say no. Plus, with Bay attached, you know that they'd get to Catwoman as soon as humanly possible instead of this whole "I am a nihilist Joker" crap from The Dark Knight.
Cons: Kurtzman and Orci would probably take their Daddy issues (Fringe's Walter/Peter complicated relationship, Star Trek's Kirk trying to live up to his dead father's memory by self-destructing but then coming through as the hero he was destined to be, even Transformers' Optimus as Tough-But-Fair Robot Daddy to Shia's Sam Whitwicky) to pop culture's most parent-obsessed character, leading to the risk of a third act emotional breakthrough where Batman cries. There are enough Batman characters to make Revenge Of The Fallen seem understaffed, and the various personality tics of said Batman characters could lead to more unfunny schtick like the Twins and/or Jazz from the Transformers movies. Michael Bay possibly already sees himself as Bruce Wayne. Also, there's every possibility that the movie would make no sense whatsoever (See: Transformers, Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen).

JJ Abrams' Terminator
Pros: Abrams' sense of kinetic, fun filmmaking is just what the franchise needs after Terminator Salvation - He's a sci-fi nerd who knows how to make successful popcorn movies full of tech that are really all about people; in other words, he's a younger James Cameron, before Cameron fell more in love with the tech involved in making movies. A Terminator-ized "Bad Robot" logo would be awesome. There'd probably be a Simon Pegg cameo.
Cons: Abrams' inability to not have a happy ending would mean that Skynet would be completely defeated by the time he was done, whether it was a movie or trilogy. The time travel core concept would allow him to reboot the series whenever he wanted, with Zachary Quinto as Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator. There'd probably be a Keri Russell cameo. Actually, fuck the cons. I really want to see Abrams do Terminator, the more I think about it.

Christopher Nolan's GI Joe
Pros: If anyone could give GI Joe some critical credibility, it's Christopher Nolan.
Cons: Nolan's attempt would probably be called A Real American Hero and would likely be three hours long, most of which would be spent filled with actors who should know better (Yes, Gary Oldman, we're looking at you) telling the audience how difficult it is to be a real American hero in a morally ambiguous world. There would be at least one subplot about abuse of military power to underscore the moral ambiguity until we move into the third act when the audience needs to get pumped and then Duke would abuse military power to stop the bad guy and then walk away in disgust in order to make a point that will be lost on the majority of an audience who were excited to see shit blow up finally. Cobra Commander would be so compelling that you'll start to wonder if he's wandered on set from a different, better, movie. Purists would complain about Snake Eyes' closing monologue about how difficult it is to be a ninja in the US military. No child would ever want to buy a GI Joe toy ever again.

Bryan Singer's Transformers
Pros: Singer's mix of geek cred and understanding of human drama/cheap angst is exactly what the Robots in Disguise need. His X-Men movies show that he can deal with large casts, and also keep the core of the original concepts and characters without getting weighed down by nostalgia. His Superman Returns shows that he, uh... knows Kevin Spacey, who could probably do a good Megatron voice? Okay, maybe not that last one.
Cons: Tom Cruise would end up playing Optimus Prime, and Ian McKellen would cameo as the Matrix of Leadership/Allspark/Creation Matrix/whatever the hell it's called these days. Singer would leave before the last film in the trilogy to go and make a Go-Bots movie about Leader-1 really being Jesus and stalking his ex-girlfriend.

McG's Dollhouse
Pros: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!
Cons: Revamping Joss Whedon's television series into a stand-alone movie, McG would give interviews about really getting to the heart of the darkness at the center of the concept but then present a movie that's a series of comedic vignettes wherein Eliza Dushku, Lucy Liu and Ellen Page are sassy, independent girls who have to roleplay different personalities and lives while working undercover for D.O.L.L.house, a secret spy organization that pretends to brainwash people and rent them out to clients - with hilarious consequences!

Dougherty left the X-Men franchise with director Bryan Singer when Singer decided to work on Superman Returns. But, during an interview with the /Film podcast about horror DVD Trick 'r Treat, Dougherty shared the ideas he and X2 Singer considered for the third X-Men movie:

"The idea was that you open up with Alkali Lake but it's completely barren and dried up and there are these odd reports of strange phenomena going on around the world accompanied by bright lights in the sky.

"The idea would be that both the X-Men and the Brotherhood realise that essentially a very god-like force had entered their reality and that it was causing disruptions around the world, you know mutant prisons being decimated, I had pitched an idea about a fleet of cargo ships getting torn apart in the Atlantic and you found out that they were shuttling mutants as slave labour.

"You found out was that Phoenix was going round the world taking things into her own hands and that she had basically returned as a god, which they did in X3. She had viewed herself as above the conflict, that she was here to end things on her terms, she was sick of the fighting and she was going to take things into her own hands and she did not give a s**t what the X-Men or the Brotherhood had to say about it.

"And ultimately the way it was going to end, at least the version I was pushing for, would be that Phoenix was kind of like the Starchild at the end of 2001, she didn't just get stabbed and die again, but she kind of chose to leave.

"The one idea that I loved, that I really wanted to do, was that Cyclops would build the Danger Room. He felt guilty that because the X-Men were too weak, they weren't strong enough or fast enough, that was the reason Jean died. If they were a little bit better at fighting, then she might still be alive. It was all about this guilt he had about her death and he built the Danger Room to train them to be better. In the end it really was about him not being able to let go of her and that causes the chaos and disruption in the movie and in the end it's about him letting her go.

"Ultimately she kind of becomes that cosmic force that Phoenix is known to be, she leaves Earth and becomes a god or at least a higher level of intelligence and she goes into the cosmos possibly to kick-start life somewhere else. The final scene for me would have been her telling Cyclops or her telling the X-Men 'I'll be watching.'"

Dougherty also said he wouldn't have had Rogue take a cure for her draining mutant abilities, and felt it was the wrong message to send:

"The whole point of Rogue's character is that she is supposed to come to terms with who she is and also I don't think it's good to tell girls 'Yeah you should change yourselves so you can get a guy.'"

Podcast with Michael Dougherty [/Film via (and transcribed by) The Geek Files] Here's the direct link to the interview.

Below is unused concept art of the Phoenix's destruction by Adrien van Viersen. [also via The Geek Files]

you can subscribe to the podcast here.

Talking during an appearance with director Kim Ji-woon at the Pusan International Film Festival in South Korea, Singer told the audience,

I'm still looking to possibly returning to the 'X-Men' franchise. I've been talking to Fox about it... I love Hugh Jackman. I love the cast.

While Singer has spoken before about his fondness for the X-Men, this is the first time he's confirmed rumors that he and Fox have discussed the possibility of his return. Another reason he wants to return to the franchise he helped launch, he says, is because of the opportunity it offers to make social commentary without the audience necessarily realizing it:

[I like to] trick audiences into thinking they're seeing fireworks, but they're learning about themselves and listening to what I have to say. The excitement about working in science fiction and fantasy is - the stories, if they are good, are about the human condition.

And if they're bad, they're X-Men Origins: Wolverine. We hope that Singer and Fox come to an arrangement that'd see him back with the students at Xavier's; it's really not been the same since he left.

Bryan Singer wants more 'X-Men' [Hollywood Reporter]

More images at the link. [CinemaSpy]

Even if you're the greatest Bryan Singer fan in the world - and I'm sure someone out there saw Valkyrie and thought, "Man, if only this guy could have handled the Galactica reboot instead of that Roswell dude" - the idea of anyone handling a new version of Battlestar Galactica less than a year (Hell, it was announced less than six months) after the much-discussed, critically-inescapable finale of the then-SciFi Channel's version seems like a horrific misstep on the part of Universal and executive producer (and Galactica creator) Glen Larson. Why? Let us count the ways:

This Isn't Your Older Brother-By-About-A-Year's Battlestar Galactica
It's not just that audiences may wonder where Six, a female Starbuck or the notion of cylons that look like humans are in this proposed new version, so used are they to the concepts that Ron Moore brought to the franchise - concepts that Singer's threeboot won't be using, if reports are to be believed. It's that Moore's Battlestar Galactica ended up as much more than a television show; no matter how good Singer's version ends up being, there will be some sense of anti-climax because this version didn't get invited to the United Nations for a discussion about human rights that ended with a change to the UN charter. Trying to compete with that kind of impact isn't the smartest idea at the best of times, but seems like commercial suicide when it's announced so quickly after the event. Which leads to...

It's Just Too Soon
This is the part that really confuses me. I can understand Universal wanting to take advantage of what seems like a hot property, but it's the "And in order to do that, we shall throw out everything that made it work and start over" bit that I get stuck on. What made Moore's Galactica popular with both critics and audiences wasn't the core concept, but the execution; the original Galactica, after all, was canceled twice (Although you could easily make the argument that Galactica 1980 was a mercy killing), and it's not just because television audiences back then weren't in a downbeat, post-9/11 mindset. By abandoning Moore's take when it's not only so fresh in our minds, but the defining take in our minds, it's almost dooming Singer's version to failure before he's even started production. There's striking while the iron is hot, and then there's striking while there's already another iron there from last time, all the while telling us that that first iron doesn't really exist.

Yes, I may have strained my metaphor a little there.

The Singer Problem
Here's the thing: I know that I'm meant to be wowed by Bryan Singer's involvement, but I'm finding it hard to be too excited about the director of Superman Returns bringing that same fan-fiction mentality - and I say that as one of the few people who liked that movie - to Galactica. There was something about Superman that suggested that, when he's too close to a property, the sureness of something like The Usual Suspects (or even X-Men) is lost to nostalgia, a feeling that isn't helped by what's already leaked out about Singer's failed attempt to reboot the show for television. Also, is it so wrong that I can't shake the feeling that Singer's best contribution to the world of entertainment has been producing House MD instead of anything he's actually directed...

In the end, the feeling behind any plan to make a Battlestar Galactica movie that isn't directly connected to Ron Moore's version is just confusion. I'm not excited, I'm not feeling like my childhood has been raped, I'm just... confused as to why it seemed like a good idea now. And I get the feeling that I'm not alone in feeling that way. We'll see if Singer and company can work past that, and create something that people will want to pay money to see.

Hitfix is reporting that the rumored BSG movie is getting the go-ahead — and Singer, who tried to reboot the TV series back in 2001 with producer Tom DeSanto — is rumored to direct. According to DeSanto, the Sept. 11 attacks gave Universal cold feet about going forward with the dark Singer/DeSanto reboot, but now they may be getting a second crack at the property.

But here's the kicker, what do you do when a dark BSG reboot has already been executed by another creator, garnering love from critics and loyal fanbase, but never "successful" in terms of viewership. Do you take ideas created by RDM and company to appease fans, or go back to the original source material and start over?

Hitfix seems to believe it's still all up in the air saying:

Right now, my sources indicate that the big decisions haven't been made yet. Singer is the first major creative element to be approached, so once they sign him, they'll go find a writer and they'll figure out exactly which story they're telling. It seems like he'd want to get back to the ideas he originally loved about the piece, but since that was developed with another studio, I'm not sure that would work.

AICN reports that the Singer screenplay (pre-RDM) was about "genocidal Cylons [that] were secretly taking their marching orders from humans." (You can read our detailed description of the screenplay, from last year's Comic Con, here.)

The real question seems to be: would you be interested in a BSG without Six and her red dress? Are you prepared to accept Cylons that can only look like killer robots?

The series - as yet unnamed, although we're sure that a deal can be worked out with Garrison for 2012: It's A Disaster!!! - is described as

a thrilling action-adventure story blending scientific fact and myth with popular conspiracy theories centering on the Mayan calendar and what it predicts for mankind at its end date.

Although, with a plot that follows an "down-on-his-luck professor" as he uncovers ancient mysteries and prophecies and tries to avert global disaster, it sounds more like Indiana Jones - or, worse, Noah Wyle's The Librarian - than anything to do with any scientific fact. Singer, who'll co-produce the series (written by Michael Petroni and Michael Bond) with Andrew Deane and Keith Addis, is a believer, though:

"[The Mayan calendar is] the most accurate calendar created by man, so accurate that many believe its origins may lie elsewhere. Regardless of what you believe, what is truly mysterious about this is that a number of cultures and religions, including Hinduism, all point toward a period of great upheaval which happens to coincide with the final month and year marked by the calendar. Our story will explore whether we are truly alone in the universe, and other related mysteries, all of which are set against the backdrop of an incredibly exciting and fast-paced adventure.

I'm calling it right now: Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull: The Television Show.

Syfy enlists Bryan Singer for 2012-themed series [SciFi Wire]

In an interview with Total Film, Singer was asked about the possibility of directing another Superman movie. Singer sort of lurched around an answer:

I don't know, I don't know. There are still issues...I just...I just don't know. I don't necessarily...I don't know. It's one of those things where...It's so weird talking about stuff unless I'm about to ramp up and shoot it.

So what does that mean, Singer, are you ramping up to shoot it? This only perks my interest more, as I would like to see someone else handle America's boy scout. It needs fresh directing blood desperately. On a positive note, Singer talked about the X-Men fondly, saying "I would love to return to that universe." Does this mean the Magneto universe too, as in an interesting WW2 set prequel?

The only thing that concerns me about Magneto is that if the prequel were to follow the track I used in X-Men, which is Magneto's history in the concentration camp, then I've lived in that world. Apt Pupil, X-Men and now Valkyrie… I've lived in that Nazi universe for quite a while. I just might need to take a little break before I do something like that.

Interesting answer, but I still wouldn't mind Singer going after the Magneto movie. He is, like he said, dedicated to the franchise maybe enough to keep his friend Brent Ratner away from it.

[Geek Files]

Freedom Formula: Ghost of the Wasteland is set in the future where everyone fights in mechanized battle armor, but for fun. Gone are jets and submarines — instead, we send out men in super armor, to make battle. Then one lowly racer discovers that his blood may have the power to change the world.

I'm not a huge fan of this series — the suits are great looking, but man I care so little for mech suits, unless Robert Downey Jr. is inside. On the other hand, I have no doubt that Bryan Singer will do great things with the concept, like Superman Returns.

[Variety]

An Ain't It Cool News tipper spilled the beans that James McTeigue, the second unit director for the rumored Wachowski Plastic Man movie may be taking full control over the film so the Watchowskis can focus on a WB Superman trilogy. According to AICN, "Bryan Singer has refused to undertake a re-boot of the Superman franchise and has left the Executives at WB with no choice but to take a fresh creative direction." And what a different direction that would be.

Seriously, I'm shocked. Aren't there 1,000 directors vying for this job? My brain can't even fathom what a Wachowski Superman would even look like. I was really excited for the Wachowski Plastic Man movie, as I thought they would really be the only directors to take the content seriously enough to make it fun and entertaining. If this rumor turns out to be real, they'd be giving up a passion project to pick up the pieces of a desperate to be rebooted, too-many-hands-in-the-pie franchise. Could they even pull off a more interesting Superman?

It's been a rough patch for the brothers, what with the beautiful-yet-unfortunately-written-and-executed Speed Racer. So from that perspective, this may make the two step things up to reclaim their nerd credit, but I just can't see them diving into a project with this many people involved and leaving Plastic Man behind. Still, if anyone is going to get me at least re-interested in this project, dropping Singer and adding the Watchowskis is probably the way to go.

And where does this all leave Bryan Singer? Why he's moving onto the Logan's Run movie. Which means - if there rumors are true - then we are most certainly getting a Plastic Man, Logan's Run and Watchowski Superman reboot.

[AICN]

Talking to the LA Times, Singer was asked about the fate of his remake of the 1976 Michael York film about a future society that killed its citizens once they reached the age of thirty, and his answer was non-committal, but surprising:

I’m taking a few months to collect myself and figure out what I’m going to do in that regard. We did a lot of development on that movie and a lot of work. To start it up again, I wouldn’t start it up again without a full commitment. So I have decisions to make. Right now, that’s just hanging around.

The surprising part isn't that Singer would be considering returning to the project - there is a completed script written for it by his Valkyrie screenwriter Chris McQuarrie, after all - but that Singer was still involved in the project at all; in 2007, a new team were announced by Warner Bros. for the movie, including Joel Silver as producer, Children of Men's Tim Sexton as writer, with commercials director Joseph Kosinski making his feature debut... but all news on that front has been suspiciously quiet since the announcement. Does Singer's comment mean that that team is no longer involved? Will we have to wait thirty years for Logan to make it back to the big screen... and, if so, does that mean that we'll have to all be killed as soon as the credits roll?

Bryan Singer on 'Logan's Run' remake: 'I have decisions to make.' [LA Times Hero Complex]

Talking to UGO, Singer was unforthcoming about where he stands in regards to any future Superman movie:

I love Superman and I can not tell you anything else... I am not officially involved in the talk [about a new movie], no. Well it’s, you know, I have relationships with Warner Brothers and with the character and, and, and, and it’s just the way things work out.

However, he also said that he was "not divorced" from Superman, which suggests that either he'll stay on as a producer (in name only, perhaps) for a new Superman movie, or that Lois has a bit of a surprise waiting for her when she comes back from the Daily Planet early one day.

Bryan Singer Is Not NOT Doing Superman: Man of Steel [UGO]

According to the Hollywood Reporter, H+, which will be produced by Singer's Bad Hat Harry Productions company for Warner Bros.' Warner Premiere line, started life as a television pitch by writers John Cabrera and Cosimo De Tommaso before being moved into the digital space. The series revolves around the aftermath of a future terrorist attack that has killed off a percentage of humanity — a percentage who chose to plug themselves directly into the internet. (Some would say that that decision right there was always going to lead to problems, and I can't say that I disagree too much).

With no director — Singer is expected to act as producer on the project only — or cast decided upon, the earliest date for the series' premiere is expected to be the latter half of 2009. By which point, we should all have connected ourselves directly with the world wide web in expectation of the project.

Premiere sets live-action Web series [Hollywood Reporter]

Note: We didn't include any directors who haven't worked in the genre this decade. We also left out McG and Brett Ratner. If either of those guys is your favorite director, we're very sorry. Very, very sorry.

The unfinished CGI animations looked incredibly cool, but super video game-y and old-fashioned, coming from 2001. There was a scene on an "agro-ship," with plants in a giant hangar space. The shots of vipers and raptors flying around were made to look like 16-mm. newsreel footage, with a camera attached to the tail or front of the vipers. And the vipers were designed to be able to flip around. We saw footage of the New Caprica space colony, with streets and street signs, on a planet. The show's version of Battlestar Galactica had big battleship-type guns, like in a World War II film. The animatics looked very clean and crisp, and the vipers looked very nimble. And we saw vipers being launched through tubes on the side of the Battlestar, followed by a shootout inside an asteroid field and a game of chicken on a barren planetoid. And then there was footage of the Cylons, doing backflips and looking acrobatic, then squatting down with their legs apart and shooting. There was even a funny clip of a Cylon lifting its leg, winding up, and throwing a baseball.

The show would have had designs by Guy Hendrix Dyas, who also worked on Singer's X-Men movies.

In the abortive 2001 version, it was 20 years after the original series, and the humans had taken a vote and decided to abandon the search for Earth. They'd found an asteroid field and set up the New Caprica colony there, and over the following two decades they'd gotten decadant and become obsessed with glitz and pleasure domes and gambling. According to producer Tom DeSanto, it was as if the Jews had stopped at Mount Sinai and set up Las Vegas. And then the Cylons show up and attack.

That was the part, with the cylon sneak attack on the colonies, that worried the Fox execs. They put the pilot on hold for a month or so, with casting only partly complete. And by the time the network regained its nerve, Bryan Singer "had to do a Sophie's Choice" and choose between BSG and X-Men 2. He went off to work on X-2, leaving BSG unfinished.

In the end of pilot, we would go to the planet Cylon, and the camera would dive through the mysterious clouds, down through a tangle of mechanized buildings, and you'd hear the voice that has been instructing the Cylon attackers earlier in the show. You would zoom in on the source of the voice as it talks about the future and the need to convert humanity. And it turns out the Cylons are led by a group of humans who have been "converted" into Cylons. And the leader of this group is none other than Richard Hatch, aka Apollo. It turns out Apollo was captured and became part of the "Cylon collective." (Yes, just like the Borg.) The series would have been about the relationship between Apollo and his son, who's the new Commander of Galactica. The son would have been struggling to redeem his father's humanity and bring him back from Cylon-hood.

Producer Tom DeSanto told Comic-Con Singer's production company was working on a $13.5 million backdoor pilot for a new BSG, which would air on Fox and then on the Sci Fi Channel. The episodes would have been letterboxed, and the repeat airings on Sci Fi would have had extra footage. DeSanto said the story of the humans "forgetting their purpose" and living in super-capitalist decadence on New Caprica mirrored what he was seeing of his friends during the tech boom around 1999-2000, with people obsessing about their stock portfolios. And just like the Cylon attacks in the abortive Singer pilot, 9/11 brought people back to a sense of purpose.

And here's some BSG 2001 concept art from Nathan Shroeder. More at the link: