Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Lobo (DC Comics)

1/27/10 - According to the Los Angeles Times' Hero Complex blog, Guy Ritchie has set aside the planned Lobo film to clear his schedule for a fast-tracked Holmes sequel, according to producer Joel Silver.  Silver is a producer of Holmes as well as Lobo, which would adapt the ultra-violent antihero from the pages of DC Comics.  "I don't think he's going to do it now," Silver said. "The studio wants us and Guy to focus on making another Sherlock Holmes. So I think we're going to be doing that. But we're seeing what happens with this. Everybody is analyzing everything. It's all kind of happening right now as we talk. Sherlock is sitting at just about $400 million in worldwide gross and showing itself to be pretty effective and pretty strong. So we're trying to see if we can do something quickly with another Sherlock Holmes movie. We have some ideas and some good story points."

11/25/09 - Lobo is a DC Comics character for mature audiences, an alien antihero who exterminated his own race. He has super strength, healing and smell and frequently swears with words like "frag" and "bastich." Joel Silver wouldn't reveal whether the big blue Lobo would be created on a computer or with prosthetic makeup, but he has already commissioned a promising test. "We just did a big test, and the studio just saw it, so we're seeing how we're going to pull that off," Silver said. "It's up to the studio to make the decision what they want to do, so I'm waiting to see if they want to make that movie."

9/3/09 - Warner Brothers has signed Guy Ritchie to direct Lobo, the live-action adaptation of the DC Comics drama about an alien interstellar bounty hunter, Variety reported. Don Payne wrote the most recent script draft, and Joel Silver, Akiva Goldsman and Andrew Rona will produce.  The character originated in 1983 in Omega Men, written by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen, and has had several comic incarnations since then. In the film, he is a 7-foot-tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who rides a pimped-out motorcycle and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc. Lobo teams with a small-town teenage girl to stop the creatures. WB is aiming for a PG-13 rating.  Ritchie will make the movie his follow-up to Sherlock Holmes, the Silver-produced film that stars Robert Downey Jr., Jude Law and Rachel McAdams, which Warner Brothers opens Christmas Day.  Production on Lobo begins early next year.

7/20/09 – SCI FI Wire reported that producer Joel Silver has a project he'd especially like to bring to the big screen: Lobo, based on the DC Comic series about an interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter.  "Lobo is one I'm very excited about maybe doing one day, hopefully soon," Silver said. "I think we can do it. We've got a script we like."  Originally created as a peripheral character in Keith Giffen and Roger Slifer's Green Lantern spinoff comic Omega Men, Lobo was reinvented as an antihero in the early 1990s by writer Alan Grant and artist Simon Bisley, who elevated the exaggerated biker persona to epically monstrous levels.  But Silver said he had a way to translate the homicidal and decidedly adult character into a PG-13 movie. "I think it's structured now as a PG-13 movie," he said. "I think we've done it that way, but I love it. I've just wanted to make it for a long time, and I think it's a great character, a great guy."  Though Silver declined to reveal further details, he suggested that the technology that James Cameron is currently working with might play a role in realizing Lobo's transition from page to screen. "When any of you see Avatar, see pieces of it, the technology is genius, the stuff that's out there that is doable is fantastic," he said. "It's such a great character."

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