Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Okay... so I put up the ELEKTRA story, forwarded the link to a few friends to follow up on, and then went out to do my afternoon errands.
I got back and found my mailbox crammed full of e-mail that has helped dramatically clarify the situation. Let's go over each step of this just to be crystal clear:
The synopsis below is the one being sent out as part of the weekly production breakdowns that go to studios, development companies, and producers. It appears that whoever prepared that breakdown took one of the reader synopses from the Amazon.com entry for the ELEKTA: ASSASSIN graphic novel and simply cut and pasted it, word for word.
As Mark Steven Johnson said in an e-mail this afternoon, "We've never dicussed this storyline and have no plans on making this version of the Elektra movie. It's true that Fox is thrilled with the success off DD (coming up on $100 million) and are anxious to get an Elektra Assassin movie in the works ASAP."
I've also heard from another source that the Nick Fury rights are tied up in another development deal, and that the characters wouldn't be able to appear in an ELEKTRA film.
So chances are, when they hire a writer to develop this material, they won't be using the Frank Miller graphic novel as direct source material. Instead, it may be inspiration in terms of tone, but expect a new storyline, one unique to film, to be developed.
In the meantime, you can argue over how the various elements of the now-debunked synopsis below stack up, and we hope this clears things up:
Reactions to DAREDEVIL have been all over the place, and that’s cool. I liked it a lot, but then, my favorite comic book movie in 2002 was BLADE 2, not SPIDER-MAN, so obviously I’m not exactly in step with all of fandom. The news was announced after the second strong weekend of DAREDEVIL box-office that there would be a DD sequel as well as a spin-off, giving Jennifer Garner’s Elektra her own film.
We’d heard that same sort of buzz after X-MEN did so well regarding a WOLVERINE movie, but that never came to anything. In this case, though, Fox seems to be fairly aggressively looking to make this happen.
Today, one of our spies forwarded me the official Fox synopsis for ELEKTRA: ASSASSIN, and one thing is obvious just from a quick once-over... this is going to be a totally different film than DAREDEVIL was. If they make the film they describe below, it could be really cool:
The beautiful killing machine known as Elektra has returned from her supposed death and is on a mission to kill Presidential candidate Ken Wind.
She's wanted by S.H.E.I.L.D. operatives after she assassinated South American Presidente Carlos Huevos. She dispatches, in rich, bloody detail, many an agent. One of those unfortunates is agent John Garrett, who she shreds nearly to pieces, only to leave him alive for her own amusement. Garrett is revived with a special electronic and pneumatic body. Elektra uses some sort of bizarre Ninja mind control over him to make him do her bidding.
Meanwhile, S.H.E.I.L.D. is busy rebuilding Perry, Garrett's partner who also was badly mutilated by Elektra. What they don't know is that Perry has a history of violence and rage, and it's up to Elektra and Garrett to stop him before he gets fully rebuilt. But Garrett's betrayal of S.H.I.E.L.D. (due to Elektra's mind control) has agent Chastity and Colonel Nick Fury on his trail.
Nick Fury? S.H.I.E.L.D.? Really?!
This is your first glimpse of what they’ve got planned for this character and this franchise, so tell me, fanboys... whattaya think?
"Moriarty" out.
