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Samuel L. Joins Frank Miller's SpiritBy Ryan 'The Rican with the Irish name' McLelland on June 10, 2007
Will Eisner’s comic book The Spirit is widely considered to be the ‘Citizen Kane’ of comics. Now with Sin City writer turned director Frank Miller prepping a live action Spirit movie word has come along that Samuel L. Jackson is attached to play the lead villain Octopus.“As far as I’m concerned…I’m looking forward to it,” Jackson said. “I’m anxious to find out what (Frank Miller) wants me to look like, how we want to do it, and when we want to start.”  What would the highly green screened Jackson look like up on the big screen? Miller’s description of the villain went something like, “(The Octopus is) a meek lab assistant who reinvents himself as a psychotic nightmare that kills anyone unfortunate enough to see his face. The Octopus' tentacles reach into every aspect of crime in fictitious Central City, a city he plans to wipe out." Jackson is quite happy to be teaming with Hollywood’s newest hot director. “I’ve been trying to reach out to Frank for years,” notes Jackson. “I always knew that Sin City would make a great movie. At least one of the stories, just give me one of them. I could never really get in touch with him so I could talk to him about getting the rights, but he knew I was looking for him.” “Maybe a month and a half, two months ago, (Miller and I) actually met,” Jackson continues. “(We) had lunch, hung out, talked about Spirit, what he was going to do (with it). He said, you know, you’ll get something from me soon.” And how well does Jackson know the source material – about a detective named Denny Colt who fights crime in Central City with the blessing of the police department? “Well, the Octopus actually created Spirit when you come down to it,” Jackson said. “He was sort of a mad scientist who worked at a morgue. Spirit was a young cop who got killed. So when his body came in, he was working on this kind of serum that would make people sort of immortal. He tried it on [Spirit] and he came back to life, and then he tried it on himself, so he could be, you know, his nemesis and he became even stronger.” Pretty well it would seem. Jackson also noted how the movie would be updated a bit for the Y2K crowd, “Back in the day when the original comic was done, it was kind of a 1930s/40s kind of thing, so there were still Nazis and all that kind of stuff. Frank is going to update them to a point. You know there’s still a dead young cop who comes back…maybe I said too much.” Original writer/artist Will Eisner had always kept time fluid in the comic book, that when it was the forties, The Spirit occurred in the forties, but when it was the fifties the character was then in the fifties, and so on. The film will be set modern day though with lots of throwbacks to the original vision of Eisner and how he brought us Central City. Producers for the film have said that Miller decided to ‘script’ the film by first photocopying original Eisner panels on the wall until a single cohesive story line was finally together. The producers both added that Sin City is a heavy influence for The Spirit in terms of trying to bring a comic book to life on screen. Miller is said to be done the next draft which should be the film’s final shooting script. The film itself will not be an origin story. The characters have all already hit the streets running and, thanks to the digital technology of today, those streets of Central City will be very similar to how Eisner made the city look in the comic and therefore keeping it very true to his vision. Those streets will be filled with Spirit characters like Commissioner Dolan, Ellen Dolan, Sand Serif, as well a slew of femme fatales and bad guys that The Spirit is so known for. Source:MTV Movie News
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