Sin City has a lot to answer for – like the sudden popularity in Jessica Alba, the continued employment of Josh Hartnett, all those copycat films about funny looking midgets spraying yellow blood everywhere – but it also gave us Frank Miller.
Frank Miller is the comic book guy it's not illegal to like. By creating the Sin City graphic novel and co-directing the movie, Frank Miller announced his presence as a man who's not afraid to, er, draw some pictures of people shooting guns out of car windows and then making a film about it. Or something. Our point is that Frank Miller has announced that he's going to direct a movie about The Spirit, a comic book that he's had nothing to do with.
As well as having shown that he can create startling comic books about Batman headbutting Osama bin Laden and bus stops that scare the arse off children, Frank Miller is showing that he really wants to be a proper film director, too. He's already co-directed Sin City with Robert Rodriguez, and Sin City 2 is on the way. And probably Sin City 3. But that's not enough for Frank Miller – he's signed up to direct The Spirit, too. Not being comic book geeks in the slightest, all we really know about The Spirit is that it's an old comic strip by Will Eisner, but ComingSoon has more details:
The Spirit, which debuted in 1940, tells the story of a masked detective who is believed to be dead. Using a mausoleum as his home base, Eisner's character fights crime in the dark shadows of Central City, using cunning and ingenious forms of punishment.
It'll be much harder for Frank Miller to direct a film about a source material that he didn't create – although hopefully he'll take more care than whoever was in charge of V For Vendetta, who just seemed to give Natalie Portman a haircut, tell her to speak in the least convincing British accent on record and explode Big Ben. Frank Miller already knows what he wants from The Spirit, which is a good sign:
"I intend to be extremely faithful to the heart and soul of the material, but it won't be nostalgic. It will be much scarier than people expect."
Scarier? Great – that means Brittany Murphy's going to be in it again.
Read more:
Frank Miller To Helm The Spirit – ComingSoon
[story by Stuart Heritage]