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City of Heroes Optioned for Movie, Television
The Sci-fi Channel site has word that Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes title has been optioned as a movie or television series. The rights were picked up by Tom DeSanto, producer for the upcoming Transformers film. The plan (such as it is) is to make a motion picture, and then transfer the series to a TV format. The original news is from the industry trade Variety, but that article doesn't appear to be available online yet.
So that means it'll be canceled in the middle of a storyline?
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"Taxibot confessions"
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
The City of Heroes IP and universe was basically designed to be a generic superhero universe into which you could insert your character and story. The backstory is nothing but an excuse for why the city has upteen million heroes. It's bland, derivative and IMHO not really worth the trouble of licensing.
Color me baffled.
I was under the impression that the movie Mystery Men was made under a similar premise. Ditto with the cartoon (and very short-lived TV series) The Tick. Although it may have simply been a parody of every comic book ever made.
Either way, I can't see a City of Heroes movie/series turning out a whole lot differently.
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
Who'd want to watch a movie where the first 55 minutes are spent tweaking the size, shape, and costume of the main characters, and then it gets boring and repetitive...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Any successful characters will have their powers suddenly nerfed in between episodes.
Welcome our new Clockwork overlords....
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
A Clockwork Orange is taken... what about... Clockwork Green? It's people! It's peeeeeopllllle.
Sig Registration Form 34c_766(a) submitted to Ministry of Signature Management. Approval pending.
Like the comic! No, wait, that's had two different publishers run screaming from it after a year.
Like the tabletop RPG! No, wait, that was two poorly developed sourcebooks for a lousy D20 wannabe.
Like the novels? Yeah, that's it-- those must be popular, because I've never seen them on the shelves!
It seems some other people share my feelings. I played City of Heroes for well over a year. I really liked it initially but it got increasingly bland. However, there were some things about City of Heroes that were great, and that's what kept me playing so long. It wasn't a yet another fantasy game, first of all. Character customization was excellent, but considering there are few items to acquire it isn't quite as big a feat. There was also a sense of awe early on, discovering new zones, looking up at these skyscrapers towering over the character. The travel powers were another great feature.
The one thing the game did well, which is really all the game had, was fighting. City of Heroes bordered on arcade-like gameplay, at least compared to any other MMO. Battles were very fast-paced and a single player of the proper class could handle a considerable number of foes. The battles were involving, a player really has to stay on his toes in tougher fights. And interaction between fighting characters was done well. It usually felt like hits were making contact. Compare that to even recent MMOs like LOTRO where characters often seem to be swinging at thin air. I don't think any MMO has had a fighting system anywhere near as good as CoH.
Unfortunately, the game suffers from overly obvious use of templates. Indoor missions, especially those in office buildings follow these maze-like paths that make little sense. For most zones, once you've seen a small sections you've pretty much seen it all. I tried following the various storylines but ultimately found them not to be very interesting. There's little substance. There's all this random fighting and little at stake. Compounding that problem was the fact that each issue didn't expand on the story but added a completely unrelated element. I realize some of these issues affect MMOs in general but CoH felt overly packaged.
So reading that some is actually considering a movie or television show based on this game I can't help but wonder why? I can only imagine it will be something like the comic books they were shipping every few months for anyone with a subscription to the game. I found the comic books to be a bit goofy. The stories were all disjointed and the characters weren't particularly interesting. I don't really see this being noticed given what's already out there in the superhero genre. I also don't see the game having enough brand awareness for this sort of venture to be worthwhile.
I thought the fact that people have been making movies out of comic books left and right because they don't have the imagination for a genuinely new project was bad enough. But now, it's a movie based on a game featuring generic superheroes? This ought to be about as exciting as watching someone play a video game for two hours - and not a square RPG without random encounters, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hollywood and tv ran out of ideas years ago. Any piece of crap that has any buzz whatsoever is desperately needed to fill the hundreds of crappy cable channels and studios.
... this show has been canceled during the title credits"
"Mustard Guy from Fark: the Movie"
"Joke about Uranus: the original Sci-Fi Channel mini-series"
"The Dune Remake, just like Frank Herbert would have wanted: using a bunch of crappy sets and no-talent actors"
"City of Heroes"
"City of
First off, I'd like to mention that I grew up reading comic books and love the seeing superheroes in movies and on TV. However, I fear that a show like this will bring this superhero trend to the tipping point of saturation and it will collapse much like a few years ago with the zombie trend. I really dont want to see the one good thing that emerged from this trend (Heroes on NBC) to get canned because of market saturation caused by creating yet another superhero show.
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME