Here’s another one for our “believe it when we see it” files.
The Hollywood Reporter has the exclusive news that Warner Brothers has started early development on a Plastic Man film with up-and-coming screenwriter Amanda Idoko charged with writing the script. Little is known about the film except that it will be a comedic action-adventure romp.
Plastic Man first appeared in the first issue of Quality Comics’ Police Comics, cover dated August 1941. He was a common crook named Eel O’Brien who was shot and left for dead by his gang after a robbery at a chemical plant. When a mix of chemicals enter his wounds, he developed the power to stretch and contort his body into all shapes and sizes. He developed the identity of Plastic Man to get revenge on his old gang, eventually giving up a life of crime to instead fight it.
The character was one of the most popular ones of the World War II era. However, when superheroes went out of favor, Quality shut its doors and DC Comics bought its characters, Plastic Man included.He never was able to recapture the popularity he had in the 1940s, but he was one of the rare comic book characters to have his own Saturday Morning cartoon, The Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show, which ran from 1979 to 1981 on ABC.
Fans of the character know enough to take this news with a grain of salt. Plastic Man has been optioned to film since at least 1988. In 1992, a film written by the Wachowski Siblings and to be directed by TV director Bryan Spicer and with an eye on Jim Carrey as the lead went nowhere. The Wachowskis then revived their script in 2009 as a vehicle for them to direct, this time with Keanu Reeves in the lead role, only to have nothing come of it. Considering the Wachowskis were able to get Jupiter Ascending made and not a Plastic Man film, I’m not holding my breath for this project.
More on this as, or if, it develops.
