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Role Playing (Games) Media Movies Television

City of Heroes Optioned for Movie, Television 39

Posted by Zonk from the strange-days-are-made-of-this dept.
The Sci-fi Channel site has word that Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes title has been optioned as a movie or television series. The rights were picked up by Tom DeSanto, producer for the upcoming Transformers film. The plan (such as it is) is to make a motion picture, and then transfer the series to a TV format. The original news is from the industry trade Variety, but that article doesn't appear to be available online yet.
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City of Heroes Optioned for Movie, Television More

City of Heroes Optioned for Movie, Television

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  • Sci-Fi Channel, huh? (Score:4, Funny)

    by WilliamSChips ( 793741 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `ytinifni.lluf'> on Thursday June 07, 2007 @07:41PM (#19431457) Journal
    So that means it'll be canceled in the middle of a storyline?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by IgLou ( 732042 )
      Yes, and at the peak of popularity... or at least the percieved peak since the show isn't allowed to continue. But lets be fair, Sci-Fi needs to keep the schedule clear for all those great mini-series they want to do... oh yes, endless mini-series.
      • Oh, cmon, you know, as a card-carrying geek, that it's only a matter of time before they produce a 16-hour event (not counting 10 minutes per hour marketing in advance) entitled "Reign of the Psuedo-Basilisks", because... well, we've covered dragons, and gargoyles, and sharks with frikkin laser beams and....

        Really, come to think of it, I should just go through the Monster Manual and write a treatment for each monster in alphabetical order for pitches.

        Give me something productive to do until January so I don

  • And it shall be called... (Score:3, Funny)

    by IthnkImParanoid ( 410494 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @07:53PM (#19431575)
    "Taxibot confessions"
  • The City of Heroes IP and universe was basically designed to be a generic superhero universe into which you could insert your character and story. The backstory is nothing but an excuse for why the city has upteen million heroes. It's bland, derivative and IMHO not really worth the trouble of licensing.

    Color me baffled.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by morari ( 1080535 )
      Don't tell Marvel that! Of course, they own the word superhero, so you can't even legally describe the game as a "generic superhero universe".
    • I had the same exact thought. There were some sorta interesting villain groups but it's basically every superhero cliché you could think of... at least the ones that wouldn't get them sued. And some that would :P
    • But is it really that much different from marvel and DC universes? Apart for the fact that it's only a few years old, that is.
    • Because people have heard of it. Brand names that have already generated millions of dollars across 3 continents sell better to entertainment executives than "Yeah, I've got this idea for a movie."

    • Re:Why license the City of Heroes IP? (Score:5, Informative)

      by arthurh3535 ( 447288 ) on Friday June 08, 2007 @07:04AM (#19435367)
      This is terribly incorrect. There is quite a bit of 'story' and 'character' in City of Heroes. Quite a bit of it is only in the form of the story arcs that character play through, but there were two books and two comic series.
       
      Statesman is not just Superman with a different outfit. For one thing, he started out a dying, desperate criminal mastermind plundering across post-WWI for magical artifacts to cure him of being exposed to mustard gas in World War I.
       
      Just because you might not be familiar with their IP, doesn't mean there isn't something interesting to use.
       
      The "world" of City of Heroes is very interesting and worth of expanding onto the big-screen, in my opinion.
  • I was under the impression that the movie Mystery Men was made under a similar premise. Ditto with the cartoon (and very short-lived TV series) The Tick. Although it may have simply been a parody of every comic book ever made.

    Either way, I can't see a City of Heroes movie/series turning out a whole lot differently.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by maxume ( 22995 )
      Which premise? The movie to tv franchise premise, or the bunch of superheros premise? I doubt Mystery Men was intended to be picked up as a television show, just based on the casting. The Tick was most definitely a parody of comic books, but it started as a comic book, created by this guy:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Edlund [wikipedia.org]

      who was/is also a writer/producer on stuff like Firefly and The Venture Bros.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Nazlfrag ( 1035012 )
        Mystery men also began life as a comic book, the Flaming Carrot, which was also somewhat of a parody. The protagonist, the Flaming Carrot himself didn't make it to the movie, and they messed with the characters like the movies tend to.

        Both plotlines seem quite different to CoH though, and there seems to be endless room in Hollywood for more comic-book spinoffs. I don't doubt we'll see something there. Hey, it's gotta be better than Doom: The Movie, right?

        • Ok, "Doom", the movie, wasn't actually that bad. If you want a yardstick to measure that by, consider "The Hulk".... and there are just as many spin-offs of spoofs as there are comic books themselves. I don't know about the plot of City of Heroes; but I'm sure it's not based on all the information collected from its online denizens and more-so the vanilla 'plot' outlined in the guide all players receive when purchasing the game. Ho, hum... sounds like another plotless game rescued by the CGI avengers!

          • Ok, "Doom", the movie, wasn't actually that bad. If you want a yardstick to measure that by, consider "The Hulk"....

            While I'll be the first to admit "The Hulk" had it's sucky parts - it was also based on the early Hulk comics, and many people were expecting the Bill Bixby version.

  • CoH movie? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zippthorne ( 748122 ) on Thursday June 07, 2007 @09:17PM (#19432341) Journal
    Who'd want to watch a movie where the first 55 minutes are spent tweaking the size, shape, and costume of the main characters, and then it gets boring and repetitive...
  • Right, this is going to go places!

    Like the comic! No, wait, that's had two different publishers run screaming from it after a year.

    Like the tabletop RPG! No, wait, that was two poorly developed sourcebooks for a lousy D20 wannabe.

    Like the novels? Yeah, that's it-- those must be popular, because I've never seen them on the shelves!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 )
      I liked the novels! They were really cliche and dumb and kinda boring at times. Now why did I like them? I'm still not sure!
  • It seems some other people share my feelings. I played City of Heroes for well over a year. I really liked it initially but it got increasingly bland. However, there were some things about City of Heroes that were great, and that's what kept me playing so long. It wasn't a yet another fantasy game, first of all. Character customization was excellent, but considering there are few items to acquire it isn't quite as big a feat. There was also a sense of awe early on, discovering new zones, looking up at these
    • ...and please, for the love of all things holy... if they ever decide to go through with it, don't allow Ewe Boll anywhere near it. Otherwise, I might buy it when it comes out on DVD.
  • I thought the fact that people have been making movies out of comic books left and right because they don't have the imagination for a genuinely new project was bad enough. But now, it's a movie based on a game featuring generic superheroes? This ought to be about as exciting as watching someone play a video game for two hours - and not a square RPG without random encounters, either.
  • First off, I'd like to mention that I grew up reading comic books and love the seeing superheroes in movies and on TV. However, I fear that a show like this will bring this superhero trend to the tipping point of saturation and it will collapse much like a few years ago with the zombie trend. I really dont want to see the one good thing that emerged from this trend (Heroes on NBC) to get canned because of market saturation caused by creating yet another superhero show.

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