Metal Men #46, Cover by Dick Giordano
With Green Lantern flickering out at the box office last year and Chris Nolan vowing to walk away from the Batman franchise after next month’s Dark Knight Rises, DC Comics and Warner Bros. need a booster shot. But according to a post over on Vulture, vitamins are out and minerals are in, as Men in Black III‘s Barry Sonnenfeld prepares to rectify Hollywood’s Gold, Iron, Lead, Platinum, Mercury, and Tin deficiency with, of all things, a Metal Men movie. It’s still a rumor, but one with a significant name attached to it.
The team itself isn’t exactly a household name, nor is Dr. Will Magnus. But everybody’s familiar with the likes of these individual elements, if not their atomic numbers.
Perhaps best known as a favorite super team of Mad Men’s Glen Bishop, the Metal Men debuted in 1962’s Showcase #32 in a story by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru. They enjoyed their most recent ongoing run for eight issues between 2007 and 2008. The next year, they popped up with a weekly serial in the pages of Wednesday Comics. After that, mostly cameos and co-features.
Does Sonnenfeld have the mettle to conduct any heat with this motley band of robots?
Find us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Subscribe to our RSS Feed
Some rights reserved.
I am more excited for this than I was for The Avengers.
The first run of METAL MEN was the closest thing DC had to a Marvel comic when it came to flawed heroes, dysfunctional teams and family like relationships. Why didn’t it catch on? Don’t know, I loved it. My guess is that some of the stories and visuals were out of a fever dream. Like giant robot monsters made out of what appeared to be pasta rollers. (I haven’t rolled a lot of pasta).
Actually I *can* see it, for a number of reasons. First, it’s a property that has some name recognition, but not enough so that there’s any negative feelings towards it. Second, with the inability of anything in tights not named Batman or Superman to gain any traction at Warner Brothers, by going with with robots and a guy in a suit you dodge the Green Lantern fallout entirely.
That said Paul, if Warner Brothers really wants a Booster shot, they only need Gold.
Well said.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/File:Metal_Men_9.jpg
I’d appreciate a correction from the Iron Chefs out there.
Heavy.
Think of the special effects bill!
This could be Transformers level CGI if they go all in. I kinda think some of these B and C list properties could make really successful movies….now good is another conversation. =)
No one will go see this unless they do a computer animated film. Warner needs to stop trying to use the comic book properties that don’t actually sell comics for their live action division. Just make the damn Flash!
If they go live action or Pixar-like, we can’t lose. It’ll be fun all the way!
I’ve always wanted to get into the Metal Men but never really found stories to like.
Sonnenfeld is a great choice though for a director. He can bring a lot of imagination to these characters.
I actually think a lot of DC properties would be better suited to computer animated films instead of live action. Think of The Incredibles, only if it was actually based off a comic. Properties like Metal Men and especially Shazam could bring amazing results if done with a light hearted family friendly tone as opposed to the dark and grim tone that WB seems to want to push on all their films(Im looking at you Man of Steel).
I think everyone but Warner Bros knows that Shazam would make a perfect animated film for wide release,
Sonnenfeld would make into a campy romp like his Men in Black movies. That could be really awful and a huge box office hit all at the same time.