The Four Color Media Monitor

Screen International reports of a French business that's working on revivals of some obscure local superhero creations, and surprisingly enough, they seem to have film performers working with them on this project:

Paris-based talent agent Florent Lamy, who operates under the banner of Elevate Artist Management (EAM), has unveiled an ambitious project to create a Marvel-style operation developing new content out of forgotten French comic book super-heroes.

The new activity will run alongside EAM’s core work of representing US and UK talent in continental Europe, with current names on its books including Emmanuelle Chriqui, Djimon Hounsou, Megan Fox, Elsa Pataky, James Foley and Gina Gershon and Bob Balaban.

“France has an extraordinary heritage when it comes to homegrown comic-book superheroes. Our strategy is to reclaim this forgotten universe in the same way as the Americans have revived their superheroes,” said Lamy, who has been developing the project for more than three years.

But will this project tackle challenging issues that have affected Europe badly over the past decades, like Islamic terrorism? If not, what's the point, if one believes the medium should serve the purpose of dealing with hard subjects, as comics like Captain America did during WW2?

And it seems the real reason they're working on these revivals of forgotten creations from France is so they can develop movies out of them:

The company is developing a slate of French and English-language films and series inspired by these properties and aimed at US and European platforms.

“Our ambition is to create a French Marvel with a universe shared uniquely by forgotten French and European superheroes, with the added aim of enlisting French talents who have built their careers in Hollywood, in different fields such as special effects and art design, to work on these creations,” said Lamy.

In other words, they're repeating the same mistake a number of USA publishers have made: they're not really doing this for producing escapist literature based on merit in the form of books, but rather, to serve as material for the moviemakers to build on. All that does is make this a joke. And no doubt, much of the the movies and TV shows in development will be live action, not animation. As a result, what could've been an admirable venture will only become a laughable project for the sake of getting into moviemaking. Why can't these buffoons just make up their minds whether they want to work in comics or movies? It's not so simple to choose both.

Labels: Europe and Asia, history, indie publishers, islam and jihad, msm propaganda, terrorism