Silver Surfer Spin-Off Is Not Dead, Says Straczynski
Posted 11.27.09 by BrentJS
The news that Fox's planned Fantastic Four spin-off, The Silver Surfer, had been scrapped traveled the Internet at the speed of light. In a recent interview with Collider, comic scribe and screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski (Ninja Assassin) said:
What happened was when FF2 didn't do as well as they hoped it would do, it caused them to call into question a Silver Surfer movie. The script that I wrote picked up right where FF2 left off. So if they do a Silver Surfer film down the road, it'll have to be its own separate things.
Almost immediately after the interview posted, numerous news sources declared the Silver Surfer project dead. Whether Fox got wind of this and asked Straczynski to amend his comment or he decided to of his own accord, the Babylon 5 creator quickly responded by clarifying his earlier statement:
Guys ... guys ... GUYS ... whoa, slow down, back the bus up a second.
When I was asked about the Silver Surfer script, I responded about the one I'd written around the time that FF2 was launched, and was designed to pick up where that one left off.
When FF2 didn't do as well as hoped for, that script was set aside, but that has NOTHING to do with the Silver Surfer script that is NOW under development at Fox with other folks. As far as I know, that is proceeding apace. So the hysteria that's gripped the nets about "ohmygod the Surfer movie is dead!" is not correct, as I was again referring to only that one specific script tied into FF2, NOT what's being done now.
The other script that Straczynski mentions is likely the one that Michael Green, co-executive producer of Heroes and the co-writer of Green Lantern, has been working on for Fox. Green's script will likely reboot the franchise, in light of the lackluster performance of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.