This is either good news or bad news for the most devoted of comic book fans. A spin-off film about Silver Surfer has been in gestation ever since the FANTASTIC FOUR sequel, which I personally felt was better than the first. In fact, despite it’s their many flaws, I actually enjoyed both Fantastic Four movies on a purely child-like level. Heck… I even own a copy of Roger Corman’s original cinematic rendition of the super hero team.
J. Michael Straczynski (NINJA ASSASSIN), the co-writer tapped to pen the film said in an interview with Collider.com that the underwhelming box office performance of FANTASTIC FOUR 2: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER is what caused the pull back from the SILVER SURFER project, which at one time had Alex Proyas’ (I ROBOT, KNOWING) interest in directing.
Straczynski states that his script had the spin-off picking up where FF2 left off, so in my own opinion… this may be a blessing. Many fans feel the story is “unfilmable” and are not fans of the cosmic surfer dude’s involvement in the second FF movie. However, and this is a BIG “if”… but, “if” done right, I think a stand alone film, or even limited franchise about the Silver Surfer could be really cool. It would have to begin with an origin story, as this is just as crucial to understanding the character as the origin story of Superman was to his movies.
I am most likely one of a very small minority that actually wants to see this project come to fruition, but there’s such a rich and fascinating story line with plenty of back story and creative sub-plots to explore, beginning with his origin which is directly connected to Galactus. This, I believe, is what had Proyas interested in the first place.
Granted, they’d have to make a far better attempt at doing Galactus justice than they did in FF2 (although some would say the “angry cloud” take was a prelude into the true character, whom they didn’t want to reveal just yet). In all honesty, SILVER SURFER would be a difficult, costly and risky project… but then again, people said LORD OF THE RINGS and WATCHMEN were unfilmable and look what happened.
Source: IGN
