Variety is reporting that Frank Miller has signed to write and direct a movie based on The Spirit, Will Eisner's classic comic strip. Miller, who made his directorial debut (as a co-director) on Sin City, is fashioning a treatment using actual Eisner panels. Given the visual accuracy of the Sin City adaptation, Spirit fans can look forward to seeing Eisner's dramatic designs with their expressionistic lighting effects and Citizen Kane-inspired angles on the screen. Miller told Variety: "I intend to be extremely faithful to the heart and soul of the material, but it won't be nostalgic. It will be much scarier than people think."
Miller still has to co-direct Sin City 2 before filming the Spirit movie, which is scheduled to begin shooting next spring. The film is being financed by Deborah Del Prete and Gigi Pritzker's Odd Lot Entertainment. Del Prete and Pritzker are producing along with Michael Uslan of Batfilm Productions.
Can't say that I know much about the Spirit so at least if Miller fucks it up somehow I can't get too upset.
He ripped off Eisner's Spirit stuff A LOT. But he always did it tastefully. I'm not so sure I'd want to see him write and direct a Spirit movie. The only whores in it are likely to be the non-paid kind, as Eisner had a number of great, hot villainess femme fatale types. I really hope he doesn't try to modernize it or make it too serious or violent. While Eisner's work was always mature, even in the Spirit, it certainly wasn't Sin City type of mature.
And if you aren't familiar with the Spirit, you should be. Those comics stand up to today's superheroes better than anything produced between 1939 and 1969.
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