Who says MySpace is irrelevant these days?
For it was Australian director Tim Boyle’s MySpace brief blog post from the wee hours of Tuesday morning that refuted an Associated Press story (which is no longer online) that trumpeted the announcement of a sequel to the 1996 movie called The Phantom was going to be made.
This fim is NOT a ‘Sequel’. It is a ‘re-luanch’ [sic] or ‘re-boot’ of the comic franchise to the big screen. This film has nothing to do with the 1996 movie.
His subsequent blog post elaborated on the film’s details:
Yes, this is a new look at the comic book hero, but rest assured – He wont be ‘heavily gadget man’ (as that is another comic book hero named Batman) and he wont be an ‘angry mob killer’ (as The Punisher -Frank Castle has been made into a film 3 times – remember the Dolph Lundgren film – that too was shot in Australia… old skool). He will be, without doubt “The Phantom.” A man who has sworn an oath to protect – but at what cost?
Garth Franklin at Dark Horizons was able to score a brief interview with Boyle, who mentioned that the plot of the film—which will be called The Phantom: Legacy—would involve two villains and star the Phantom, his love-interest Diana Walker “and their kids.” The 1996 film’s executive producer Bruce Sherlock is returning, with the rest of the production staff hailing from Sherlock’s Australian-based Sherlock Symington Productions.
Reaction to the news in the blogosphere has been to trash the idea of making a movie about The Phantom citing such facts as the film only making $17 million in the U.S. I couldn’t rightly remember the film myself, so I checked out the Tomatometer and found this very dismissive review from an unnamed writer at Rolling Stone.com:
Don’t they ever learn? every summer, Hollywood drags another hero out of comic strips, pulp novels, radio shows or video games in the hopes of creating the next Batman or Superman franchise. The result is usually something silly like The Shadow, with Alec Baldwin lurking behind a cloak. Billy Zane looks even sillier in The Phantom. We’re talking real silly, “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” silly, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” silly.
Personally, I don’t remember much about the original movie, but I do remember that I saw it and was entertained. Oh, and one of the tie-in promotional items was a skull ring, just like the Phantom’s and I owned two of them, one for each hand. Luckily for my sense of needing to be right all the time, I’m not the only one who remembers them.
In any case, I “friended” Boyle on MySpace, which means I’m actually going to have to start using the site again, aren’t I?
Andrew Hankins says:
Haha I remember loving the movie at the time as I did with way too many 90’s cheese-fests. At the time of The Phantom’s release, one of my sisters was working for some kind of promotional firm, and she got me a lot of promo stuff for random movies. I remember that year she gave me a Phantom ring. I was stoked. Granted, I was 7 or so.
Trisha Lynn says:
@Andrew: Alas, I do not have the luxury of that kind of youthful glee because I was 18 when the film was released. ^_^
Andrew Hankins says:
It may have been when I re-watched Phantom that I decided to stop going back to re-watch the questionable favorite films of my childhood. Some, like Transformers: The Movie, are exactly how I remember them, but most (Steel.. *shudder*) should just be left in the past.