Previously, I took a look at the failed attempt at a 2005 Sandman movie from Warner Bros. In the eighth installment of Looking Back, we’ll be examining a character that was absolutely dominating DC Comics during the '90s. Who you ask? I'm talking about the Main Man of course!
For this latest installment of Looking Back, we don’t have to actually travel too far back in time as we look at Warner Bros. planned big screen adaption of the Main Main, Lobo. While the movie was in development for nearly a decade, it suddenly picked up traction in 2009 with the announcement that Guy Ritchie would be following up Sherlock Holmes with Lobo.
In September 2009, Warner Bros. announced that Guy Ritchie would direct a live-action adaptation featuring the comic book character ,replacing Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Jumper) who had been attached previously. The script was penned by The Simpsons writer Don Payne (My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer). Variety described the premise as :
"Lobo is a seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who drives 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."
Ritchie was scheduled to begin production of Lobo in early 2010 and bring an "irreverent, gruff tone" to the film as he did with previous films Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The studio was aiming for a confusing, PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. However, I’ll give Warner Bros. the benefit of the doubt here, as The Dark Knight showed us just how far you can stretch a PG-13 rating. While many fans were questioning the choice of scriptwriter, Payne doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record, but one of the earliest quotes from Richie about the project was that he was currently re-writing the script.
Nearly as soon as the project was announced, Jeffrey Dean Morgan stated in an interview with Collider, that he would love to play the Main Man on the big screen:
Collider: Are there any other comic book properties that you have your eyes on?
Jeffrey: You know, they’re making “Lobo” right now. That would be cool. “Lobo” would be very cool. I don’t think that I’m as big as Lobo is, but if you could, like, transplant Mickey Rourke’s body on my head, that would be just great. But I don’t know. It’s an untapped world for me as well. Every time I kind of hear about something I go out and get the book or I look it up on one of your guys’ sites. We’ll see. You’re always looking for material that’s kind of smart and fun and this seems to be where it is right now. The studios are really gravitating towards it. More than I’ve ever seen them gravitate towards anything in a long time. Comic books are really the thing right now and I don’t see that going away for at least the next couple of years.
Colider:Well, you do have an in with Joel Silver doing this and doing that.
Jeffrey: That’s true. And I think that Akiva Goldsman is doing it as well. So I do have an in. I’ll be elbowing somebody soon.
Another name that was rumored to be in the mix was Clancy Brown, most famous for voicing Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Universe and portraying the villainous Krugan in 'Highlander'
. However, it should be noted that much of the early talks were about how to depict the character;
“Whether to go the Del Toro Hellboy route or go for the pure motion- capture, CGI route ala Andy Serkis (Gollum). “ That’s a pretty interesting dilemma as you would have a pretty hard time finding a quality actor who also has the physicality required to do Lobo justice. However, the casting of the movie never developed past the work that
Legacy Effects did making body casts and concept designs (Legacy Effects also worked on Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor, I would also strongly bet that they worked on The Avengers too). However, with Joel Silver producing both Lobo and Sherlock Holmes 2, it seems that he will probably be finding a new director for Lobo in order to clear up Ritchie’s schedule for another Holmes flick. Said Silver:
“I don’t think he’s going to do it now… 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. 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.”
The future of the Lobo feature film project is currently undetermined. Hmm. For all intensive purposes, it looks like the success of Sherlock Holmes cost us a Lobo movie. Still, with a recent track record of The Losers, Jonah Hex, and Green Lantern we probably wouldn’t have gotten a Lobo movie anyway. For all intensive purposes, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel has a lot riding on it; if it doesn’t perform well, good luck getting any superheroes not named Batman out of Warner Bros.
If you need more to satisfy your Lobo fix, you can find the Lobo fan-film, The Lobo ParaMilitary Christmas Special, here.
LOOKING BACK SERIES
Lobo is a fictional character that appears in the comic books published by DC Comics. The character first appears in Omega Men #3 (June 1983), and was created by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen. An alien, Lobo works as an interstellar mercenary and bounty hunter. Although introduced as a hardened, rarely used noir villain in the 1980s, he languished in limbo until his revival as an anti-hero biker in the early 1990s. The character enjoyed a short run as one of DC’s most popular characters throughout the 1990s. This version of Lobo was intended to be an over-the-top parody of Marvel Comics superhero Wolverine (in issue #41 of Deadpool, another Marvel series, Lobo himself was parodied in the likeness of Dirty Wolff, a large blue skinned man who drove a demonic motorcycle. He was also parodied in the Image Comics series Bloodwulf as created by Rob Liefeld).
"I have no idea why Lobo took off," Giffen once said in an interview. Referring to the 1990s incarnation of Lobo he created, he said, "I came up with him as an indictment of the Punisher, Wolverine, hero prototype and somehow he caught on as the high violence poster boy. Go figure."
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