Comic Book Projects In Holding Pattern

Posted Friday, October 12, 2001 at 10:17 AM Central

by John Couture

The success of X-Men last year set off an avalanche of comic book inspired movies getting the proverbial green light. But it looks like the softening economy might be the ultimate Kryptonite for these movies.

While development and pre-production continued strongly this year, it seems that the terrorist bombings on September 11 and the economic repercussions of it are causing the studios to rethink their free spending attitude on comic book inspired movies. It seems that most of the studios are waiting to see how Spider-Man performs at the box office next year.

Batman: Year One is one of these movies playing the waiting game, which is fine with director Darren Aronofsky since they've written and discarded three completely different scripts so far. The animated Batman Beyond will most likely not even get the benefit of the doubt as cost appraisals for animating the futuristic backdrops for a feature length movie have gotten too pricey. And even Catwoman, which was the most promising with Ashley Judd attached to star, seems to be on the verge of getting the axe.

Since nothing has been made official on the status of these projects, we'll have to adopt the studio's wait and see stance until we get something more definite.