The Green Hornet is back in the news…Variety reports that producer Neal H. Moritz (“Gridiron Gang,” “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift”) has grabbed up the rights, and set the project up with Sony, where he works.
The property has been languishing in development hell for years, with the most recent person to tackle the project being Kevin Smith. Smith ultimately chickened out of the project because he didn’t feel he had the props to produce an action based comic book feature film (and you have to give him some credit for being willing to admit that, even if his fans think he’s better than he thinks he is).
Stars from George Clooney to Mark Walburg, and even Jet Li have been attached to the project at one point or another, but right now all of that is off the table, with a fresh start planned for the character.
We’ll see if this goes anywhere…these kinds of properties always seem to end up missing something when they make it to the big screen. Take The Shadow, for example…I love that movie, but for some reason it never caught on with audiences like the Batman franchise or the Superman films. I think a lot of it has to do with audiences coming in to check out things that they thought were cool as a kid…and The Green Hornet has been laying dormant for a while…so we’ll see if anything ultimately comes from this….
I am a big fan of The Green Hornet, and the only two I see that could come close to the great parts Van Williams, and Bruce Lee made of the two characters would have to be, Jason Statham, and Jet Li. Of course the Black Beauty would have to be a custom version of The Audi R8*. Please will someone make this movie, yet make sure it’s not a corny version, like the Spider Man movies. Keep the Hornet a dark image character. I mean I think this would be a big hit of a movie if done the right way.