If it’s ever seen the inside of a comic book shop, chances are a producer is already negotiating to buy the rights. And with the rush to snap up graphic novels and everything else continues, a title that has long been targeted for movie-fication has swung back into the spotlight, with Watchmen producer Lloyd Levin nabbing the rights to Matt Wagner’s ‘80s classic Mage.
**Mage **was originally dreamt up by Wagner and published by Comico back in 1984. The first run, perhaps not coincidentally the one that Levin and co are aiming to bring to the screen, was titled The Hero Discovered, and follows Kevin Matchstick, an awkward youth who looks surprisingly like Wagner himself and who meets a wizard named Mirth. The encounter leads Kev to discover his superhuman abilities, and he is gifted with a magic baseball bat. Surprise! Mirth is actually Merlin and the bat is Excalibur. He goes on to battle supernatural nasties.
We say 'back into the spotlight' because this is one title with a long history in Hollywood. The first recorded encounter between the comic and film companies was back in the year 2000, with writer John Rogers involved in a script for Spyglass Entertainment that seemingly went nowhere until it emerged again in 2002 with F Gary Gray touted as director. Since then, Zack Snyder has been linked to its development (no shocker there), but things have been very quiet.
Now Levin has control and is planning to drum up the finance to get the thing developed and shot before approaching studios with the full package. "It has always been a favourite book of mine," Levin tells Variety. "It's one of the great untapped comic books from the '80s renaissance that also spawned Watchmen and Batman: Dark Knight.
It would seem like Wagner is also pleased with the development: "It's great that Lloyd is taking on this material because his approach is to capture the essence of the original source material. The timing is good, too, because in the past, filmmakers tried to fix the material. Now they try to adhere to the material."
If Levin is successful, maybe someone will try to turn one of Wagner’s other famous titles, Grendel, into a movie. Good luck with that one…