Movie Deals: Financing for Witchblade; Burns Does Superman

This story originally appeared in PW Comics Week on December. 20, 2005 Sign up now!

by Tom McLean -- Publishers Weekly, 12/20/2005

Platinum Studios, IDG Films and Relativity Media will finance and produce back-to-back two films based on the long-running Top Cow comic book Witchblade. While no writer or director has been attached to the project, the three companies have put up a $40-million production budget for both pictures.

The project is scheduled to start shooting next year in China.

"We're not going with a female superhero type feel," says Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, chairman of Platinum Studios, which has a partnership with Top Cow to develop the publisher's comic book properties into movie and television projects. "We want to get into the character. It's going to be a deep origin. An audience isn't going to expect a superhero to emerge at the end."

The Witchblade comic book appears in 21 languages in 55 countries, and was previously a live-action television series for TNT starring Yancy Butler. Platinum also has hired brothers Oxide and Danny Pang, directors of Hong Kong films Bangkok Dangerous, The Eye 2 and the forthcoming The Messenger, to direct a film version of The Darkness, another Top Cow comic book property.

Kevin Burns Documents Superman Returns

Documentary filmmaker Kevin Burns is working on a documentary about the Man of Steel to coincide with next summer's release of Bryan Singer's Superman Returns .

Burns has a long history of making Hollywood documentaries, with Cleopatra: The Film That Changed Hollywood and Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy his best-known work. He has already interviewed dozens of artists and actors involved in the Superman mythos. Distribution plans for the film have yet to be finalized, but a theatrical release from Warner Bros. is a possibility, as is a TV broadcast and eventual inclusion of the film in the DVD release of Superman Returns.

Ghost Rider Release Moved Back

Marvel and Sony's Ghost Rider is taking the scenic route. The film's release has been rescheduled from a crowded July 2006 schedule to February 2007. The film stars Nicolas Cage and is directed by Mark Steven Johnson, who previously directed Daredevil for Marvel.