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Back in the spring of 2015, 20th Century Fox moved forward with its long-awaited Flash Gordon remake, setting director Matthew Vaughn at the helm, but we haven't heard anything about it since then. It turns out there's a very good reason for that, with Matthew Vaughn revealing in a new interview that he's still been working on it, but his original vision for the story was basically taken by Marvel's 2014 blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy. Here's what the director had to say below, when asked if he's still working on a Flash Gordon movie.

"Yeah, we've been working on it. For me, the only problem with Flash Gordon is Guardians (of the Galaxy) kind of stole what I would have liked to have done with it. You've got Star Wars, you've got Guardians, so you've got to have your own space opera, but you have to find something that can survive among these two very,...

Well, genre fans, we only have four home entertainment releases coming our way this Tuesday, but as the saying goes, they are quality over quantity.

Scream Factory is releasing the ’90s thriller The Crush on Blu-ray this week and we also have two great recent films to look forward to as well: The Wave and Midnight Special. Rounding out this Tuesday’s Blu-ray and DVD offerings is Bayview Entertainment’s DVD release of the ’80s cult classic, Biohazard.

Biohazard (Bayview Entertainment, DVD)

The cult classic returns featuring an all-new 2K 16×9 widescreen film transfer from the original 35mm negative! A group of scientists, army types and a buxom psychic use a variety of methods to suck a bloodthirsty alien out of another dimension. Upon arriving, the little devil blasts his way loose, taking part of a soldiers face along the way. The psychic and her network of friends chase the beast,...

As Google reminds us today is the anniversary of the very first Olympic games way back in 1896. What better time than now then for a beauty break featuring actors (this is the Film Experience after all) with Olympic history. Know this going in: Hollywood was Obsessed with swimmers for a long time.

Let's kick it off with the original Flash Gordon Buster Crabbe. Here are eight Olympic Beauties with acting careers after the jump...

People have been arguing the “who was comics’ first costumed hero” question for decades. Some feel it was Mandrake the Magician, by Lee Falk and Phil Davis (1934), others cite the truly obscure Red Knight created by John Welch and Jack McGuire, and still others prefer to credit E.C. Segar’s Popeye (1929). But I think it’s safe to say that most comics fans and scholars bestow that honor upon The Phantom, created by Lee Falk and Ray Moore 80 years ago this past week.

Neither Mandrake nor Popeye are “costumed heroes.” They perform their feats of daring in their regular work clothes. Whereas the Red Knight got his start in 1934 as a guy named Bullet Benton, he did not don the Red Knight costume and, therefore, the costumed hero persona until April of 1940. I suspect somebody at the Register and Tribune Syndicate took a gander at the McClure Syndicate’s success with Superman.

Thursday, Disney CEO Bob Iger made some pretty big Star Wars announcements during the Disney Shareholder Meeting, including a release date for Rian Johnson‘s Star Wars: Episode VIII as well as Felicity Jones casting confirmation and the title of the first Star Wars spin-off. But that wasn’t all, Bob Iger also showed the first piece of […]

The post Star Wars Rogue One Concept Art Looks Like ‘Halo': Band Of Space Soldiers On a Mission appeared first on /Film.

Last week, I taunted you with visions of ancient superhero movies – serials, as they were called back then. Today we’d call them really low-budget webcasts. Here’s a few more worthy of your consideration, and this time we’re delving into a trio of iconic heroes from the pulps and newspaper strips – and now, of course, comic books.

The Shadow is the best-known of all the classic pulp heroes, and for a very good reason: many of the more than 300 stories published were quite good. Walter B. Gibson created something magical – a series with a lead character who had plenty of secrets but no secret identity, aided and abetted by a slew of agents who had no idea who their master was. The character’s popularity was enhanced massively by a highly successful radio series, one that gave The Shadow an alter-ego and a female companion and took away most of his agents.

Flash Gordon has been an iconic sci-fi character since he was created by cartoonist Alex Raymond in 1934. Eight decades later, the space-faring hero gets a gift for his 80th birthday in the form of a new film.

Flash Gordon--who saved the world from Ming the Merciless, with help from Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov-- is taking another trip. This time, he’s coming back to the big screen. Twentieth Century Fox has closed a deal that gives them the screen rights to the iconic space hero. As part of the whole package, the same guys who are working on the Star Trek 3 script--J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay—along with John Davis as producer, will be putting the screenplay together. Davis spent over a year securing the rights from the Hearst Corporation.

The success of the comic strip in the 30s led to the popular trilogy of movie...

Last Week, FilmDivider reported that Flash Gordon, which had been stuck in development hell for years, was moving forward with Star Trek 3 writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. Today, THR confirms 20th Century Fox has finalized a deal to pick up the screen rights, with both writers attached.

John Davis will produce this sci-fi reboot, after the studio spent more than a year trying to lock down the rights from the Hearst Corporation. The veteran producer worked on Chronicle for Fox, and is behind The Man from U.N.C.L.E. reboot. He used his own discretionary fund to secure the rights.

George Nolfi wrote the initial draft of the screenplay, which will be updated and reworked by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay. Nolfi will now be a producer on the project.

The original comic strip was created by Alex Raymond in 1934, and was turned into the 1980 cult classic Flash Gordon.

After original Flash Gordon star Sam J. Jones made a brief appearance in the 2012 comedy Ted, many fans hoped it could revive the gestating Flash Gordon reboot that has been stuck in development hell for several years. Although nothing has been confirmed at this time, FilmDivider is reporting that Star Trek 3 writers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are currently working on the script, with producer Jon Davis currently seeking a studio deal for the project.

This is the first we're hearing about the writers working on Flash Gordon, but a Mormon Artist interview with J.D. Payne also mentions the project briefly, although there are no quotes attributed to the screenwriter regarding Flash Gordon.

Their take is said to be similar to Breck Eisner's, who was attached to direct back in 2008, with Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama writing the script. The story will go back to the original comic...

Last week my colleague Ms. Thomases and I were sharing a movie experience at a Manhattan multi-mega-complex. Running the gauntlet of promotional material we passed the familiar poster advertising the franchise-saving event, Man of Steel. Once we were settled in the theater and the obnoxiously repulsive commercials started playing – most were for television shows – I mentioned to Martha that the new management of Warner Bros. hasn’t truly green-lit the Justice League movie. “They’re waiting to see how Man of Steel works out.”

Her Oh-Oh Sense flared up. While both of us were hoping for a killer Superman flick, nothing we have seen thus far has promoted any sense of confidence. Do we need another origin story filled with the Els and the Kents? Most of us have cable teevee or DVDs or streaming video or all three, and there’s plenty of filmed presentations of that origin story.

"Special From Next Avenue"

By Leah Rozen

Hollywood has long carried an Olympic torch for the Games and their charismatic champions

Before he wore a loincloth as Tarzan and yodeled while swinging across movie screens on a vine, Johnny Weissmuller was an Olympic swimming champ.

The strapping Weissmuller -- 6-foot-5, 190 pounds -- power-splashed his way to five gold medals in the 1924 and ‘28 Olympic Games. Recognizing a marketable hunk when it saw one, Hollywood snapped him up.

"It was like stealing," Weissmuller (1904-1984) once said of his Tarzan career, which included a dozen films between 1932 and ‘48. "There was swimming in it, and I didn't have much to say. How can a guy climb trees, say ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane,’ and make a million?"

I was a sucker for Weismuller’s Tarzan films -- as a kid, I used to watch the scratchy prints that repeatedly aired on Saturday afternoon TV.

In fact,...

It's conventional wisdom among most old "Star Wars" fans that George Lucas should have quit while he was ahead.

"Star Wars," "Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" were everything we needed, while the prequel trilogy was obviously a childhood-ruining space abomination.

Or was it?

Turns out, the younger generation of fans doesn't see it that way at all — last year's poll on the best "Star Wars" movie ever turned up surprising results.

We asked our resident Fanboy to explain Millennials' loyalty to "Phantom Menace," etc. So he wrote us a short one-act play.

Obviously.

Ext. The Inky Blackness Of Space. Night. (Or Maybe It's Day, It's Hard To Tell In The Inky Blackness Of Space.)

Yellow lettering approaches us on a slant. It reads.

Planet Fanboy: Episode VI – Rerelease of the Prequels. It is a time of great confusion for adult nerds. 'Star Wars' films are in theaters,...

When Harry Knowles, the Grand Mufti of movie bloggers, has a birthday party he does it up big. It starts with the Internet's most die-hard cinemaniacs filling out an elaborate application for a coveted, assigned seat at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse Theater, and ends with intense film junkie bragging rights.

The event, appropriately called Butt-Numb-a-Thon, is a (more than) 24-hour movie marathon mixing hard-to-find vintage prints and first looks at forthcoming films. In years past, attendees have had sneak peeks at movies like "King Kong", "Kick-Ass" and "Hobo With A Shotgun", as well rare opportunities to see flicks like Disney's "Song of the South" or Orson Welles' "Chimes at Midnight."

This year, after a Friday night kick-off party at an elaborate pinball arcade, the lucky few exchanged tips on how long to wait until drinking coffee (everyone has their own theory) and tried to guess the line-up. This was my second Bnat,...

It’s happening as I sit here typing, on a Thursday, about 30 miles due south of the village where I happily abide, and, barring as always the unforeseen, I’ll be in the midst of it sometime tomorrow, mingling with armies of strangers, gazing at exhibits both exotic and banal, almost certainly meeting folks I have known for decades but seldom see whelmed by noise and flashing lights and color and celebrities and hucksters and the breath of chaos…

I refer, of course, to the New York Comic Con. (You thought I meant Armageddon? Naw… but maybe next week…) This is the younger, but extremely vigorous sibling of the monstrous (in at least two meanings of the word) San Diego Comic Con, but it is no wimpy little brother. Like Athena, springing from the head of Zeus, the Nycc arrived burly and mature, though a bit disorganized, three years ago...

I regularly wonder how I’d describe the games I’m playing to my parents. Mom and pop play games, so they’re familiar with what the medium offers. “Space soldiers invade a planet of space Nazis” and “wistful cowboy fights to find his family” aren’t going to earn me confused looks. My relatives have real-life reference points aiding their understanding of why I’d play these games, and paring them down to these bare essentials makes games’ goals even easier to convey. I cannot employ the same tactic to Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. “So, Dad, super-heroes punching anime chicks...

Today's generation is surrounded by technology. Rapidly-advancing tools of all sorts are so prevalent in every aspect of our lives that we depend on them, nay, expect them to make our lives easier, more enjoyable, and more interesting. Multi-billion dollar industries such as cinema are in no way immune from the public's desire for bigger and better things. Moviegoers have the options of watching films in a variety of locales, in IMAX or 3D, via regular projection screens or the latest in digital picture. For those who prefer to stay close to home, the options multiply. Satellite TV, cable TV, Redbox, a widespread availability of DVDs, and even the disappearing neighborhood rental store all combine to contain every movie that the discerning film aficionado could ever hope to watch, available at the push of a button or a short drive up the street.

Well... almost every movie. It may seem...

It was on this day, April 22 1935, that the Bride was born…

One of the most iconic images in all of horror cinema, the Bride has haunted our nightmares for 75 years now, an eerily beautiful, hissing figure covered in gauze from head-to-toe, draped in a brilliant but inelegant white shroud, and with flaming white streaks shooting up a jazzed, Nefertiti hairdo.

The Bride’s part in the 1935 Universal classic The Bride of Frankenstein is a small one, but it burns instantly and indelibly into one’s psyche, as the radiant Elsa Lanchester and the immortal Boris Karloff enact the ultimate nightmare version of a blind date.

The Bride of Frankenstein has endured for 75 years, its reputation as one of the great touchstones of early horror movies – and of Hollywood’s Golden Age — only looming larger as the decades tick past. The absolute zenith of the original Universal Horror cycle, Bride effortlessly combines everything: ghoulish chills,...

The reboot of sci-fi classic Flash Gordon has taken a step closer with a second draft of the script set for studio approval. Director Breck Eisner, whose remake of the horror flick The Crazies has landed positive reviews, said writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are ready to submit a script in the next two months. The movie - which will be shot in 3D - will go right back to the comic-strip roots of the character and ignore the 1980 film starring Sam J Jones as well as the old Buster Crabbe TV serials.

What’s the best movie from the late 70’s that features light sabers, an enormous space fortress capable of annihilating entire planets, wisecracking robot sidekicks, and dogfights between interplanetary spaceships? If you said Star Wars, you’d be wrong! Leave it to the wacky Italians, always quick to exploit a popular trend, to rip off George Lucas’s cash cow resulting in a film so spectacularly cheesy that over 30 years later it has actually aged better than the film it emulates. That movie is of course is the insane 1978 sci-fi “epic” Star Crash, an infamously harebrained but entertaining-as-hell Star Wars knockoff that is Not available on DVD.

Like Star Wars, most of Star Crash is comprised of a string of Flash Gordon-inspired cliffhanger adventures. Caroline Munro stars as Stella Star, an intergalactic smuggler who, along with her alien companion Akton (Marjoe Gortner), is captured by some sort of galaxy-wide...

Capes, Crooks & Cliffhangers: Heroic Serial Posters Of The Golden Age by John E. Petty & Grey Smith (Ivy Press, tpb, 308 pp, $39.95)

Action heroes of films past are the focus of this reference book. It’s a fine introduction to serials for new fans that also serves as a superb art gallery of colorful posters and vintage photos, imagery that will delight veteran buffs. By the way, for those who may have forgotten: serials were low-budget films (made from 1912-56) primarily intended for youthful audiences and most frequently played on Saturdays; they offered adventures in bite-size episodic chapters that usually ended with our heroes apparently dead in life-threatening situations. “To be continued!” the screen screamed—and moviegoers knew that though the good guys would somehow get out of that formidable fix, it would be best to return next week to find out exactly how.

Capes concentrates its individual chapters on those important...

When I began contributing to Dread Central, I was eager to reminisce about the never to be forgotten, Forrest J Ackerman and his astounding legacy. But who has time to look backwards when Ack keeps going “forry-ward” in the here and now? Case in point? In a matter of weeks Profiles In History will hold the greatest genre auction in history, offering prized objects from the collection of the Grand-daddy of all collectors. Gosh! Wow! (Dang)! It’s the Forrest J Ackerman Estate Auction!

Over the years, hardcore collectors have snatched up every existing morsel, crumb and Blob of memorabilia associated with our classic genre heritage. Sure, there’s no shortage of Terrorific collectibles in the form of model kits, prop-copies and photos. But just try and find anything “original” from the golden, silver or, hell - even aluminum-foil era of Imagi-movies? Try finding it for less than a Kong’s ransom!

It’s pretty amazing what people accidentally will say on the red carpet at awards shows. The most recent example happened over the weekend when The Spirit producer Deborah Del Prete referred to her next project with director Frank Miller was an old sci-fi hero. This virtually confirmed the rumor that began over the summer that Miller would tackle the first Sf comic strip character.

When the rumor first surfaced over at IGN, Nu Image/Millennium Films quickly told him “that no deal is set yet for the rights or Miller, and that they are still mulling over director contenders.”

IESB's Robert Sanchez could not get Del Prete to confirm if she was referring to Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, both of whom have been optioned for film this year. The site did some additional digging and report, “sources very close to the Miller camp…confirmed the sci-fi hero that...

We here at ComicMix pride ourselves on being not only a comic book site, but also a pop culture site and so we cannot let the passing of House Peters, Jr. go by without noting it. The actor, born January 12, 1916, died from pneumonia on October 1.

Who you might wonder? The actor was the model for Proctor & Gamble’s Mr. Clean, an icon that has gone largely unchanged.

The actor also had an early role as a Sharkman in the original 1936 Flash Gordon serial.

His son Jon Peters said in a release, "he always played the heavy. Even though he wasn't happy about being cast in those roles, he worked really hard at it."

Peters’ credits include roles in The Twilight Zone (1960), Target Earth (1954), Port Sinister (1953), Red Planet Mars (1952), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), King of the Rocket Men (1949), and Batman and Robin (1949). It wasn’t until he starred in...

A Hollywood auction featuring Michael Keaton's Batman costume and dinosaurs from the Jurassic Park franchise has proved a huge success - raising a staggering $4.1 million (GBP2.05 million).

The 31st Profiles In History auction's top seller was a rare King Kong six-foot film poster, one of only three known to exist, which sold for $345,000 (GBP172,500) - over $100,000 (GBP50,000) more than the reserve price.

Other hits at the event included the Batman costume worn by Keaton in Batman Returns, which was snapped up by a superhero fan for $103,500 (GBP51,750), with Charles Middleton's Ming The Merciless cape from 1936 movie classic Flash Gordon selling for $115,000 (GBP57,500).

And movie monsters were another hit of the day, with one collector paying $126,500 (GBP63,250) for a leaping Alien Warrior figure from Aliens, and a Velociraptor from The Lost World: Jurassic Park Ii was sold under the hammer for $115,000 (GBP57,500).

The auction took place on 27 and 28 March in Los Angeles.