Marvel held a press conference yesterday to discuss the debut of the new Fantastic Four animated series on the US Cartoon Network this weekend, debuting with an episode entitled “Trial By Fire”, with the FF’s arch-nemesis Doctor Doom being saved for the second episode. The series is said to have a strong ‘anime’ feel to it (with anime and manga being so hot just now this is probably a shrewd move) and uses both traditional and CGI animation. Story editor Chris Yost declared that the series would pick up on all sorts of FF history from the earliest days to contemporary work:
“When I grew up reading the FF, I started in the mid-80s with John Byrne’s run. But we went all the way back to when it started from the ’60s and up. There are elements we take from Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s days all the way up to (Mark) Waid’s days.”
Apparently this will extend as far as directly referencing the famous cover to Fantastic Four #1 with the FF battling Giganto at one point in the show. It will be interesting to see how it pans out; recent cartoon series of superheroes, although principally aimed at younger viewers, have often proven to be popular with adult audiences as well.
In other TV news Variety reports that a pilot episode based on the Terminator franchise, mooted for some time, has now been greenlit, with Warner Brothers hiring David Nutter to direct a pilot of the Sarah Connor Chronicles; Nutter has previously been involved in making pilots for some very successful telefantasy shows including Smallville. Variety also mentions that one of our favourite actresses from telefanasy, Buffy’s Sarah Michelle Gellar, will be returning to the realm of Asian movie horror (after the Grudge) in a Western version of the Korean supernatural thriller Jungdok entitled Addicted.
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