Riding Spider-Man's coattails

© St. Petersburg Times
published May 10, 2002

Spider-Man rescued a few of his Marvel Comics superfriends when he drew in moviegoers like flies last week. Onscreen, the webslinger saved New York City, but sighs of relief could be heard as far away as Hollywood and as close as St. Pete Beach.

The largest weekend box office take in history, $114.8-million, proved audiences will flock to films based on popular comic book characters, a questionable proposition since Batman and Robin laid an egg five years ago. You can bet that on Monday morning, studio executives were dusting off superhero screenplays to hitch a ride on Spidey's wild swing through megaplexes.

Here in the Tampa Bay area, screenwriter Michael France greeted the news of Spider-Man's success with optimism. France knows how these things work in the movie business. Nobody ever saw a blockbuster they didn't want to imitate. France has written three scripts -- two currently in production -- based on Marvel Comics characters: the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four and Punisher.

This could be, as the Thing would say, clobberin' time for the 40-year-old writer.

"The good news is that it proved to executives who green-light these pictures that, if they spend the money to make it good and, most importantly, stick to the characters -- have fun with it, but don't make fun of it -- then there's a huge audience for that," France said from his Pass-a-Grille home.

France, who also co-scripted James Bond's GoldenEye, is currently keeping tabs on the Universal Pictures production of The Hulk, directed by Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and starring Eric Bana (Black Hawk Down) as Dr. David Banner, portrayed by Bill Bixby in the cultish 1970s television series. Muscleman Lou Ferrigno played Banner's mutant alter ego on TV, a not-so-jolly green giant emerging when the doctor was angered. The movie Hulk will be a computer-generated beast. Shooting began in March for an expected June 2003 release.

"The fact that Spider-Man opened so big is going to generate publicity for (The Hulk) and that's great," France said. "I'm really proud of the work that I got into that movie and it's going pretty good."

"My approach was that I wanted to deal with Banner's psychology, and that's held up throughout what they're shooting right now. I see him as a guy who had problems with anger even before he got that gamma ray shower, a guy who had an abusive father so he worries about what happens when he loses his temper. He really has problems after he gets his Hulk problem bestowed on him.

"You have to find a way to make a comic book character like the Hulk more human or else you just have a Saturday morning cartoon. It's just a monster-in-the-street movie."

Other writers have tweaked France's original screenplay along the way, including Michael Tolkin (The Player, Deep Impact) and Lee's producing partner, James Schamus. Whether France eventually receives onscreen credit will be determined by the Writers Guild of America after comparing the finished product with his work.

"I certainly hope so," he said, "but the Writers Guild moves in mysterious ways. All I can tell you is that I've still got a lot of stuff in there. We'll see what happens by the end of the year on that."

France can wait. He has learned to be patient in this business. His screenplay for the Fantastic Four was delivered to Twentieth Century Fox five years ago and cameras still haven't rolled. "The reason is that it's unbelievably expensive," France said. "It's probably one of the most expensive comic book movies you can make with special effects shots to portray the characters."

For the uninitiated, the Fantastic Four is a crime-fighting quartet made up of the extremely malleable Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, the Thing (who could give the Hulk a tussle) and the Human Torch. They are a dysfunctional extended family whose members can't hide their super powers like heroes with secret identities. For that reason, France estimated the movie would cost nearly $200-million to produce, compared with around $130-million for Spider-Man.

"Spider-Man, I guess, is only Spider-Man for about 30 percent of the movie, something like that," France said. "With Fantastic Four, the Thing is in effect in every shot. Mr. Fantastic is in effect in every shot. Even outside of action sequences, the comedy always revolves around the Thing and the Torch fighting at home, so even the comic relief scenes are, like, a million dollars per minute."

Director Chris Columbus (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) took a crack at France's script five years ago and couldn't get a handle on the material. Neither could four subsequent directors.

"The problem they keep running into is that, no matter what you do, it's too expensive," he said. "The Hulk is not a cheap movie to make, but all they've got to deal with is one character and a villain. With Fantastic Four, you've got the four of them plus a villain. In my script, the villain was Dr. Doom, so there's a lot of expense in that, too."

Last year, France finished a screenplay based on the Punisher, a hard-boiled vigilante against organized crime. Artisan Entertainment recently hired screenwriter-turned-director Jonathan Hensleigh (Jumanji) to bring that Marvel superhero to the screen. "Writing that was just like writing a crime movie," France said. "I didn't want to make it cartoony."

Although prolific, France hasn't cornered the Marvel market by a long shot. Fox is currently producing a live-action version of Daredevil, starring Ben Affleck as a blind lawyer/avenger, plus a sequel to last year's X-Men. Competitors are taking second looks at producing Ghost Rider, Sub-Mariner, Iron Man and Dr. Strange. The most important person in Hollywood this year isn't Steven Spielberg, it's Marvel mogul Stan Lee.

Meanwhile, France keeps busy moving into a new home a few blocks away, writing, running on St. Pete Beach and picking up after his 4-year-old son Tommy: "He devours the room. He takes the place apart like the Hulk."

Maybe that's an idea for the sequel.

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