All the excitement over movies like Watchmen is likely to create an opening for younger writers working in comics; after all, somebody's got to provide the raw materials that Hollywood will pounce on after it runs out of classic comics series to turn into movies. At least, that's the hope of people like Ed Brubaker, who recently shared his hopes and dreams with Los Angeles Times blogger Greg Braxton. "Last summer changed everything, you could feel it," says Brubaker, who had no credit on The Dark Knight but ended up getting a payday out of it anyway: "I even got money for the Batman movie because DC felt like there were fingerprints of stories I had written in the movie." In a comics universe where "mainstream" superhero creators and "alternative" creators are generally assumed to have limited interest in each other's work and, in their grumpier moments, to wish each other dead, Brubaker is unusual in having started out in the grungiest of "alternative" circles and wound up writing about costumed crimefighters. In the early '90s, Brubaker was part of the autobiographical comics scene with his Lowlife series, which featured thrilling, two-fisted tales of ripping off his employer, having his artwork compared unfavorably to that of Chester Brown, and needed a haircut. (He also edited the superb, single-issue comics anthology Monkey Wrench.) Brubaker began to edge towards the mainstream, and away from illustrating his own scripts, with the story An Accidental Death, which was drawn by Eric Shanower (Age of Bronze) and serialized in Dark Horse Presents in 1992, before being reprinted as a stand-alone volume by Fantagraphics. (That must have been sweet, given that it was the rejection by Fantagraphics' Kim Thompson that inspired the Lowlife story "You're a Good Man, Chester Brown.")

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Warner Bros. is rebooting The NeverEnding Story, thus bringing it another step closer to living up to its title. “The new pic -- which original producer Dieter Geissler also will produce and Sarah Schechter and Jesse Ehrman will oversee for Warners -- will examine the more nuanced details of the book that were glossed over in the first pic,” per The Hollywood Reporter. Yeah, that’s what remakes are usually all about – nuance.

Unlikely as it might sound, Dollhouse star Eliza Dushka is bringing a Robert Mapplethorpe biopic to the big screen.

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The recent proliferation of superhero movies have taught us that, of all things, auteur theory ain't quite dead yet.  Hand your project over to a director of unique vision, a man with deep obsessions and specific stylistic and thematic ideas, and you get The Dark Knight.  Hand your project over to a director with big ideas but not enough talent to carry them off, and you get Daredevil.  Hand your project over to a director with no ideas and no talent, and you get Elektra.  As goes art, so goes action:  even in the cinema of capes and cowls, it's all about the director.

So, given that, what can we expect from yesterday's announcements about who will be helming two hotly anticipated comic book projects?  The new Captain America flick, the last big Marvel solo adventure until we're treated to the long-awaited Avengers movie, will be directed by Joe Johnston; the new Conan the Barbarian (which isn't based on a comic, but features a character whose prominence in modern-day geek consciousness is more attributable to Roy Thomas' 1970s Marvel comics series than it is to Robert E. Howard's original stories) has fallen into the hands of Brett Ratner. 

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As everyone with a pulse and the patience to sit through endless special effects credits knows by now, both Iron Man  and The Incredible Hulk have featured in-continuity teasers at the end which are meant to prepare audiences for Marvel Studios' upcoming Avengers movie, in which the characters (as well as those from yet-to-be-released Marvel projects like The Mighty Thor, Captain America and Ant-Man) will all come together as Earth's mightiest super-team.  It's still unclear whether or not the Hulk will be a hero in the film or the villain, but it's sure that Marvel will continute to take the same intertwined, big-event approach to their movies that they did (with great success) with their comics.    All of which begs the question  what does Stan Lee think of all this?

Stan "The Man", editor-in-chief, head writer, and co-creator of the lion's share of Marvel titles during their most productive (and profitable) period, has always been an enthusiastic interview and an outspoken character with lots to say about how his characters are handled onscreen.  Now 83 years old, he's clearly looking forward to at least another two decades of goofy cameos in Marvel films, and he even drops some amusing anecdotes in this USA Todayinterview about the Avengers project.   There's the news that romance novel cover boy Fabio once auditioned for the role of Thor; the oft-told genesis of the Astonishing Ant-Man; and how Nick Fury owes his existence to Stan's low boredom threshhold.

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We're not too cool to admit it:  what with all the Marvel Films pictures coming out, and the Iron Man movie being so universally well-recieved, and the movie franchise taking a smart, fan-friendly approach to continuity and all, we here at the Screengrab are actually starting to get a bit nostalgic for the days when comic book adaptations really, really sucked.

Not that they don't suck now, at least on occasion.  It's just that now, when a superhero movie sucks, it sucks in a big, expensive, ambitious, spectacular way.  Back in the day, they sucked because they were made by hacks who spent about eight dollars on the whole production and farmed out most of the work to their nephew who used to work in a group home.  Don't believe us?  Take this, Robert Downey Jr., you smarmy sophisticated so-and-so:

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Okay, so there's a new Uwe Boll movie coming out.  Big deal, says we.  Sure, we're curious about how the Teutonic uber-hack managed to get Dave Foley to star in his new film (Postal, opening in limited release today).  And sure, we're even more curious about how he got Dave Foley to do a nude scene.  And yes, we must admit that there is something oddly compelling about a filmmaker so universally reviled that a chewing gum manufacturer has helped sponsor a petition to get him to stop directing movies, and who is himself so adamant that he is a cinematical genius that he has challenged his critics to meet him in the boxing ring.  But however rotten this German-come-lately may be -- and he's plenty rotten -- for us here at the Screengrab, there is only one true heir to the crappy moviemaking throne vacated by Ed Wood, and that man's name is Albert Pyun.  The Hack From Hawaii -- who directed his first film in 1982, only four years after Ed Wood's death -- has been responsible for over forty films and direct-to-video releases, at least one of which has already turned up on movie janitor Scott Von Doviak's "Unwatchable" list.  Both in his ridiculously prolific output and his utter lack of talent and shame, Albert Pyun leaves Uwe Boll in the dust.  So instead of trying to find a theater willing to screen Postal this weekend, why not settle down for a film festival with our man Big Al?  To help you in this terrifying endeavor, we've assembled a list of five of Pyun's best works -- and we use the word "best" in the loosest possible application to which the word has ever been put.

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982)

Albert Pyun's first screen credit -- as both director and writer -- is a real doozy that sets the tone for his innumerable too-cheap-to-be-camp movies to come.  A standard-issue steel-and-spells epic ripped straight out of Albert's Friday night dorm room Dungeons & Dragons games, The Sword and the Sorcerer cost about nine dollars to make, with a script too dull for TV and special effects that would have seemed hokey in 1972.  The real treat here is the cavalcade of has-beens populating the cast:  there's well-past-his-prime teen idol George Maharis, his suntan decaying before our very eyes; future Murphy Brown fixture Joe Regalbuto; hulking, self-serious Night Court golem Richard Moll; coked-out Nina Van Pallandt, a million miles from The Long Goodbye; unreconstructed manimal Simon McCorkindale; and, in the lead, none other than Matt Houston star Lee Horsley!  Sadly, this collection of fourth-stringers would be the hottest cast Pyun would ever work with.  It would be all downhill from here.

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With Iron Man looking to be a runaway success, Marvel Comics' film production arm is naturally looking to capitalize on the box office take to move ahead with production on future superhero franchises.  So what comic book superhero is next for the House of Ideas?  How about...all of them?

In its quarterly earnings report, Marvel discloses (among other things, including that it made enough money this year to buy Stan Lee a Silver Surfer-themed iron lung) that it's in the process of developing a boatload of new multimedia projects for release in the next four years.  In addition to a plethora of video games, TV shows, animated series and direct-to-DVD animated features, Marvel Film -- the company's in-house production unit -- has scheduled for release The Incredible Hulk, an Iron Man sequel, a Thor movie, a Captain America solo adventure, an Avengers team picture, and, of all things, a feature film starring perennial sad-sack second-stringer Ant-Man.  (We're hoping that this one sticks to the current comics approach to the character and plays as straight-up satire.)  In addition to all of that, Marvel has two licensed properties set to release in the next year:  a Punisher sequel, entitled War Zone, is releasing through Lionsgate this Christmas, and an X-Men prequel, entitled Wolverine, drops a year from now through Fox.  All that, and no Dr. Strange?  I guess no one wants to take on the supreme challenge of out-acting Peter Hooten.

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