Director News

Captain America has a director, Joe Johnston. [Link]

Rocketeer director Joe Johnston makes his return to comic book movies with 2011’s First Avenger: Captain America film. No writers or actors for the film have been announced yet.

Johnston made his directorial debut in 1989 with Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which was followed by films like The Rocketeer, Jumanji, Jurassic Park III, Hidalgo and the upcoming Wolfman movie starring Benicio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins.

As long as they can get the shield and costume to look right, I am hopeful.

Conan may have a director, Brett Ratner. [Link]

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rater is about to sign a deal to direct a new Conan the Barbarian film. The film will be co-produced by Nu Image/Millennium and Lionsgate Films. Conan was the subject of two films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1980s and has been a frequent candidate for additional features ever since but the rights went from studio to studio with no traction. John Milius, who cowrote the first film with Oliver Stone, has had a much admired King Conan script in development for years now.

I hope they start from Howard's stories, not the existing movies.

The Dark Night director Christopher Nolan is about to be sued by Batman. [Link]

The mayor of a city in southeastern Turkey plans to sue director Christopher Nolan for unauthorized use of the name “Batman.”

You see, that’s the name of the city: Batman. It’s the the capital of Batman Province, an important oil-producing region. It rests on the banks of the Batman River.

I’m not making this up.

“The royalty of the name ‘Batman’ belongs to us,” Mayor Hüseyin Kalkan tells a Turkish news agency. “There is only one Batman in the world. The American producers used the name of our city without informing us.”

This will go nowhere, but it is funny.