About 80% of comic book film directors have given interviews that run along the lines of "oh, I never read the comics --whatevah whatevah-- but I do know movies."

I can not believe this. 20 years ago yes, today no. And in this case we're talking about the producers so its even less likely that they haven't read the source material. Thinking about this I'd say the producer, script writer and designer are probably the ones who really need to read the actual book. Batman and Superman get a pass because they have such a long history outside of comics that I don't think you need to read the books. Someone could just watch a few Bruce Timm cartoons and get everything they need. But claiming that the directors (or the people making the movie) haven't read the comics doesn't fly. There's no way we would have gotten the faithful adaptations that we've been seeing over the last 10 years.

I was pointing out that Hollywood's timidity seems to stem from the fact that they fear the foreign market will not buy into an American WWII movie

So they should just throw away their money? Past box office performance backs up the claims. And I don't think Hollywood is afraid of anything except losing/not making enough money. Superhero movies are just a better investment. Here are some numbers (in millions). The first is Worldwide Gross and the second is profit after production budget (we'll ignore advertising expenses and non-BO profit because I don't have easy access to those numbers.)

Top WWII films of the 2000's

Valkyrie 200 (+125)
Flags of our Fathers 65 (-25)
Letters From Iwo Jima 68 (+49)
Pearl Harbor 449 (+309)
Inglourious Basterds 313 (+243)
U-571 127 (+65)
Enemy at the Gates $96 (+28)
Windtalkers $77 (-38)
Hart's War $32 (-38)
Defiance $50 (+18)

Top Comic Book Superhero of the 2000s

The Dark Knight (1,001) (+816)
Spiderman (821) (+682)
Spiderman 2 (783) (+583)
Spiderman 3 (890) (+632)
Iron Man (585) (+445)
X-Men 3 (459) (+249)
X-Men 2 (407) (+297)
Batman Begins (372) (+222)
Superman Returns (391) (+121)
Wolverine (373)(+223)

This might explain why investors want SGT. ROCK to be more of a superhero movie and less of a WWII movie. By the way the two biggest superhero losers were CATWOMAN and PUNISHER: WARZONE (which I loved). Even those movie only lost about $20 mill. By Super Hero standards only two of the WWII films were even worth making.

By the way, I think it's stupid to expect that SGT. ROCK would perform the same as any of the Super Hero films I listed. The character has zero name recognition. So this is really a basic misunderstanding of the property. It will be interesting to see how JONAH HEX does because I'd guess their name recognition is about the same. Also JH is going a different route by introducing supernatural horror elements which were only done for a handful of comics in the 1990's. If JONAH's a hit it will probably encourage the SGT. ROCK team to push him into the future.

Last Edited By: Five Years Later Feb 8 10 1:08 PM. Edited 1 times.