Eisner Wants to Launch New Flash Gordon Film Franchise

Director Breck Eisner (The Crazies) doesn't just want to helm a new Flash Gordon film for 2012 - he wants to launch a franchise and the first movie will be an "origin" story.
"It will be a standalone story, it definitely won't left open for more, but the ultimate goal is to turn it into a franchise, he told Airlock Alpha. It will be an origins story for Flash. He's going to Mongo, he's gonna save the planet and it will have a superhero buy in and will be unique. It is very much a superhero origins story."

Eisner is looking to the source material, the original 1930s comic strips by artist-writer Alex Raymond, with plans to  "update those and shoot the movie as if the strips were drawn today.."  But don't expect the Queen theme song from the 1980 campy Flash Gordon. And that may be a good thing. Also, Eisner should look to the comics by artists such as the great Al Williamson. And despite being more than 70 years old, the original movie serials starring Buster Crabbe (with Charles Middleton as a wonderfully sinister Ming the Merciless) are still much fun and should play into his research as well.
Eisner will play it straight, too, taking cues from SyFy's Battlestar Galactica, adding “I was originally involved with Battlestar Galactica and broke the initial script with Ron Moore. He's done a great job executing and bringing it up for modern era.Technology does now what comic books used to do. What was done with pen and ink is now done with actors and we turn comic book adventures into a real experience. ‘Avatar’ proved that.”

But Eisner has - like many other Flash Gordon fans - nothing but disdain for the attempted SyFy remake a couple of years ago. “It was crap, total crap," Eisner told Airlock. "I watched one episode. I don’t want to look at something like that – it was a real disservice to Flash and nobody watched it. What it did was pollute the ‘Flash Gordon’ name."

Pick up collections of Alex Raymond's still amazing Flash Gordon and other Flash Gordon comic strip and comic book anthology sets at local comic book shops in your area.  Fire Los Angeles stores for That Writer Guy include Meltdown Comics, Golden Apple Comics, Earth-2 Comics, Hi-De-Ho Comics and DJ's Universal Comics. If not in stock, they'll all be glad to order books for you.