Warner Brothers has been doing a lot to develop the great catalog of comic book characters they own through publisher DC Entertainment. In just a few weeks, their big budget adaption of Green Lantern will be hitting screens after a year’s worth of growing hype and anticipation. Christopher Nolan is currently in the midst of shooting the final installment of his Batman trilogy whilst simultaneously overseeing Zack Snyder’s development of a new Superman film. And while the recent pilot for a Wonder Woman television series didn’t get picked up, plans still continue to bring the Amazon princess to the big screen along with several other of her four-color compatriots such as the Flash and Green Arrow.
Joining that list of superheroes in contention for cinematic treatment is Hawkman. According to the tracking board It’s On The Grid, Warner Brothers is looking for writers to pitch them their take on bringing the hero to the big screen.
Now Hawkman is probably considered a second-tier character, but that doesn’t seem to be as much the impediment as it used to be. Iron Man and Thor have been considered second-tier characters over at DC rival Marvel Comics and their films have done well at the box office. Green Lantern was also not too well known outside of fandom circles until the advertising push for the movie recently began. If anyone outside of comic book circles recognizes the character it would probably be from his sporadic appearances on the last two seasons of the Superman-prequel series Smallville, where he was played by Michael Shanks. He has also popped up in various animated series based on DC’s characters.
For the uninitiated, there are two similar, yet distinct, versions of the character that producers can choose from. The more traditional version of the character was created in 1940 and is Carter Hall, an archaeologist who discovers that he and his wife Shiera are actually the reincarnations of the Egyptian prince Khufu and his lover who have been doomed to a cycle of reincarnation by the evil Egyptian priest Hath-Set. After discovering something called nth metal, which has anti-gravity powers, Carter fashioned himself a set of wings and using the archaic weaponry in the museum he works for began to fight crime as Hawkman. Later, Shiera would join him as Hawkgirl.
The second version of the character was born in the 1960s and cast the hero as a police officer from the planet Thanagar named Katar Hol who had come to Earth with his wife and disguised themselves with the names Carter and Shiera Hall.
My guess is that with the Green Lantern movie coming out next month playing up the interstellar police officer angle Warners will want to shy away from doing something similar with Hawkman, so we’ll probably get Carter hall, the reincarnated Egyptian. Adding weight to the probability of seeing the Carter Hall version of the character is the fact that DC Entertainment’s Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns is the writer who finally made some sense out of the two conflicting versions of the character that were floating around in the then-current continuity, leaving Carter Hall as the hero.
Of course, that is if a Hawkman script even manages to make its way through the development process and in front of the cameras, and that’s a journey even some superheroes have had difficulty in making.
Via Badass Digest.
