22 announced films from graphic novels or comics

Want some screenwriting advice? Add drawings to your script. And then put your dialogue in bubbles.If recent studio acquisitions are any evidence, then the fastest way to get a movie deal these days may just be to turn your next Big Idea into a graphic novel. In a faddish frenzy, no fewer than 22 film projects born of graphic novels or comics have been announced in the last six weeks.

“It’s accelerating because right now it’s fashion,” says Frank Miller, who created the graphic novels behind “Sin City” and “300,” and whose early-’80s series “Ronin,” about a reincarnated samurai battling evil in a futuristic New York, is being adapted by Joby Harold (”Awake”) for Warner Bros. “I think we can expect it to calm down. Comic books have always been this vast mountain range that gets strip-mined and left behind.”

 

Universal recently partnered with Dark Horse Entertainment to produce and distribute movies derived from its independent stable of comics. Meanwhile, Paramount has its partnership with Marvel, Warner Bros. owns DC Comics and every other studio is looking for new material.Meanwhile, comic icon Stan Lee is planning to reverse the process; he just partnered with Disney to go straight to the big screen with three original ideas — “Nick Ratchet,” “Blaze” and “Tigress” — which may then be turned into comics.

For nervous studio greenlighters, having a graphic novel in hand makes script development cheaper and faster, since essentially the book is a screenplay and detailed storyboard wrapped into one. It can be beneficial for the writer too, since he’ll likely retain more rights than he would by selling an original screenplay.

But most important, they’re much more fun to read.

“I don’t think there’s a single worse story form than the screenplay,” says Miller, who’s finishing his directing debut, “The Spirit,” based on a classic work by graphic novel progenitor Will Eisner.

“They’re unreadable. Just about everything makes you want to put the thing down! Whereas a graphic novel is full of pictures . . . and you get a much clearer idea of what you’d have to spend to make” a film.