With The Avengers crossing $600 million domestically this week and surpassing the billion dollar mark worldwide (now the number three highest-grossing film of all time, behind Titanic and Avatar) you can bet your stinky ass everyone in Hollywood is running around trying to find the next superhero movie. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that any exec who wasn’t planning on it would probably get fired. So what’s next? How about everyone’s favorite comic book, The Human Fly. What? Don’t look at me like that, I know you own every issue.
A Human Fly comic, based on real-life stuntman Joe Ramacieri, was licensed and published by Marvel from 1977-1979. Over its 19-issue run and in various other Marvel comics, the Human Fly had run-ins with Spider-Man and Daredevil, among others in the Marvel stable. Alan Brewer and Steven Goldmann picked up the reverted rights on the property recently. Eisenberg-Fisher Productions, which is based on the Paramount lot, will executive produce the proposed indie, with financing said to be coming from private-equity sources. Goldmann is poised to direct. Brewer, along with James Reach, will produce. Tony Babinski, Cirque Du Soleil’s in-house historian, wrote the Montreal-based screenplay. [Deadline]
Whoa whoa whoa, time the f**k out: Cirque Du Soleil has an “in-house historian?” Screw the human fly, that’s the guy I want to see the movie about. I like to imagine him wearing glasses, sitting at his desk trying to do his research while naked gay trapeze artists fly by above him eating fire and dripping sweat and astroglide all over his priceless scrolls.”No, not my scrolls!” he’d yell.
Here’s the rundown on The Human Fly from the site the producers run:
Inspired by true events, this is the story of Joe Ramacieri and his buddies, the guys behind the quasi-legendary and mysterious 1970s figure they christened The Human Fly.
Joe’s only wish was to do something big, become famous, and never have to work in the family business, a sausage factory.
After something has become so pervasive as a euphemism, it’s weird hearing it used literally, like that a sausage factory is a real place, or that a Dutch oven is a real thing you cook with. I can imagine someone looking down at a recipe going “what the hell? They want me to fart on some onions?”
His life was changed forever when he met “Hollywood Ron,” whose only wish in life was to be “the greatest daredevil who ever lived.”
Yes, the Human Fly rode on the back of jet planes, and attempted to beat Evel Knieval’s record by jumping over 27 school buses at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, became the star of his own Marvel comics series, and a man celebrated on television and in print who rubbed shoulders with the great and not-so-great. Ultimately the man beneath the mask was more nuts then [sic] sane, more con man than stuntman… an accident waiting to happen. Unfortunately for Joe it was all on his dime.
The Human Fly is a colorful and boisterously comic look at group of guys who just want to be famous for something and how they set out to do it.
Well that explains it. If he wore tights and fought aliens, you can bet Marvel would still own the rights.
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