Option This Comic!
Marc Guggenheim's six issue mini series Resurrection has been optioned by Universal Studios. The series focuses on a group of disparate characters dealing with the aftermath of an alien invasion and occupation. I've been reading the series and I like it a lot, but the fourth issue just hit the stands and here it is on the way to being a movie.
Hollywood has aquired the movie rights to so many comics and graphic novels in the last few months: it's a feeding frenzy. Are we at the beginning of a glut of comic book inspired movies which will lead to an eventual rejection of the form, or is this the natural progression for sequential art? Have comics always been this obvious vehicle for pitching movies and now people are finally paying attention?
I don't think comics are a natural springboard for movies. Granted, some excellent comic book movies have been made (i.e. Spider-Man 2, Batman Begins, etc.); however, to say that comic books are something of an appendage to film is, I think, a gross misinterpretation. Comics are comics and movies are movies. Sometimes they cross over, and sometimes they adapt each other, but I don't think either medium necessarily bleeds into another.
But think of the money they save not having to pay for storyboard artist!