The Flickcast’s ‘On The Radar’

This week On the Radar a bunch of gaming news about Halo and Gears of War, Red Sonja switches up celebrity hotties, Mark Strong talks Sinestro in Green Lantern and Tom Arnold takes to the sea to fight aliens!

Court dismisses Marvel, Stan Lee law suit.  Excelsior!

While Stan Lee has been working overtime on film cameos and convention appearances he’s also been dealing with legal fights.  This one was between Stan Lee Media Inc. and it’s former board members.  At it’s most basic level the case was over ownership of mainstream characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Fantastic Four.

The judge dismissed the case based on two primary factors.  First, the shareholders did not acquire their shares until a year after the issue of ownership occurred and second, said shareholders should not have waited nearly a decade to file their case.  No word yet on whether the decision will be appealed so until next time true believers…

Halo movie will be happening at some point

What should be an easy sell as far as a video game adaption, Halo has struggled to gain traction with studios.  However, Frank O’Connor of Microsoft Game Studios has said the film will happen eventually:

“We’re going to make a movie when the time is right,” he said. “We own the IP. If we want to make a movie, the scale of all the other stuff that we do changes dramatically. We make tens and tens of millions of dollars on ancillary stuff, toys, apparel, music and publishing. If we do a movie all of that will grow exponentially. We have some numbers if we do a movie, but it changes everything. It also changes our target and age demographic.”

Personally, I don’t see where the difficulty in getting this to the screen.  Sure, it will cost a lot of money to capture the epic nature of Halo, but it’s not like Microsoft doesn’t have that.  Furthermore, it’s a guaranteed win given the popularity of the game and mass appeal of Halo merchandise.

Mark Strong talks up Green Lantern

One thing actor Mark Strong is becoming familiar with is playing the villain. After playing the baddie in both Sherlock Holmesand the upcoming Robin Hood, Strong is set to portray Green Lantern nemesis Sinestro.  From the sounds of it though, Sinestro will have an evolution to his villainous ways:

“He is a military guy but isn’t immediately bad. It’s the kind of person he is that lends himself to becoming bad over the course of the comics being written, but initially he’s quite a heroic figure.”

It’s great to hear they are staying close the source material on this one.  Heroes turned villains are far more intriguing.  Of course, ultimately we all want to see Sinestro kick some ass!

Gears of War adaption could be the next Doom

In other game news, Gears of War may be moving forward but now the scale of the film may be downsized.  While director Len Wiseman turns his attention to the film Nocturne, New Line/Warner Bros. is taking the time to re-assess Gears of War film and budget cuts could happen:

“the studio has now cut the budget, going from a film that would have cost more than $100 million to one that will cost a good chunk less than that. It’s also reined in the story, turning it into a more simple, straight-ahead invasion story instead of a sprawling epic.”

For those who have played, or even seen, the game nothing about Gears of War screams “simple”.  Much like the difficulties the Halo film is facing, I can’t get my head around why studios are second-guessing big brand properties such as these. Limiting a film such as Gears of War can only hurt in the long run and we’ll end up with another Doom.  Ick!

Is the Arrested Development movie dead?

If you’re like me you’ve been anxiously awaiting the return of Arrested Development to the big screen.  A brilliant show on its own right, the series was unfortunately canceled but over the couple years there seemed to be interest from the cast in making a movie.  While some of the latest news sounded hopefully, series regular David Cross has come out with some unfortunate news:

“It’s not going to happen,” Cross told TV Squad. ”Way too much time it’s been (since the show ended)… I mean, there’s so many people involved. Everyone’s doing their own thing, you know. And everybody’s aged. It’s just not going to happen. I’m sure I speak for everybody when I say we’d love for it to happen, we’d love to work on it, but just I don’t think… not going to happen.”

Keep in mind, this is by no means official, but Cross does bring up some valid points.  That being said, here’s hoping something can be put together. Arrested Development was fantastic and certainly deserving of at least one last big send off.

Spike Witwicky’s parents will be back in Transformers 3

Fans of the Witwicky’s will be happy to hear they’ll be returning for Transformers 3.  Variety reports,  “Kevin Dunn and Julie White have closed their deals to return in the roles of Ron Witwicky and Judy Witwicky, respectively, and reunite with leads Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox.”

While I’m not the biggest fan of the films, Dunn and White have provided some pretty funny moments in the movies and bring an everyman quality to the story.  Comic relief may be a bit forced in the Transformers films, but I’ll definitely take the laughs provided by Spike’s parents over comedic robots of any kind.  I’m talking to you Skids and Mudflap.

Robotech finally has a script

With all the popularity of Transformers one would think someone would seriously get behind Robotech. Another film which anguishes in development hell, a small update on the status of the project has come from The Losers director Sylvain White, “I’m interested in doing it. The project is not fast tracked. There is no official thing. They sent me a draft and I liked it. It’s a work in progress.”

Here’s hoping The Losers is a big success and this will lead to White being tasked with directing Robotech.  One concern I foresee though is trying to identify a clear brand distinction between it and Transformers.  While the Robotech name is well known casual movie-goers may have a hard time realizing it has nothing to do with Transformers even though it has transforming vehicles, jets in particular.  Of course, who’s really going to argue with more of that on the big screen?  Nobody.

Tom Arnold boards Battleship

Peter Berg’s upcoming board game adaption of Battleship has another actor on deck.  Following the recent addition of Taylor Kitsch, Tom Arnold is ready to set sail.  While it’s hard to imagine a board game being adapted for film this one is taking some huge liberties regarding the premise.  Berg’s vision involves Earth defending itself (with battleships perhaps?) against an alien invasion force.  I imagine the elevator pitch for this was, “It’s Battlestar Galactica meets Independence Day at sea.” Welcome aboard, Tom!

Is Megan Fox going to be Red Sonja?

We’ve been hearing about a Red Sonja reboot for a couple years now.  The last notable information involved director Robert Rodriguez and Rose McGowan playing the title role.  Now it seems those original plans have been scrapped and a new direction is on order with Megan Fox leading the way:

“…an offer is out to Megan Fox, according to Pajiba’s sources. That’s just an offer, and she could turn it down just as easily as any actor does all the time. It might not even be a big deal — if you’re going to cast a film about a warrior princess that historically wears a chainmail bikini, of course you put an offer out to Megan Fox. Is there much chance she’ll take it? Probably not.”

Say what you will about Megan Fox but she would fill out the costume nicely, however little of it there may be.  That said, I’m hard pressed to see Fox doing any type of physical combat scenes.  She simply doesn’t strike me as sword swinging melee kind of girl.  Nevertheless, a fanboy can dream can’t he?

Modern Family can’t get a lead on Emmy’s

What do you do when your television series has so many prominent characters you don’t know who to nominate?  As it turns out, nobody really knows.  ABC‘s hit series Modern Family is facing some confusion in choosing who to nominate for what for the Emmy’s.  We haven’t seen this much confusion since Friends faced a similar dilemma:

“Either all six adult regulars (Julie Bowen, Ty Burrell, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Ed O’Neill, Sofia Vergara and Eric Stonestreet) will compete as leads; all will go supporting; everyone will go supporting except O’Neill, who as the only major pre-”Family” star could separate himself as lead; or Burrell and Bowen, as the show’s “traditional” parents, will go lead and the rest supporting.”

Like I said, confusing.  As I fan of the show even I’m hard pressed to say which actor should be promoted for nominations.  This will be one to watch, both during the Emmy’s and Wednesday’s on ABC.  This show is terrific!