I am now a comic book adaptor ... I guess

Does the madness ever end? I am now writing FIVE screenplays ... the four I've mentioned in this blog before, and I'm now working on a screenplay for a fourth X-Men movie. Not that I have any hope of someone picking it up and it actually being turned into the fourth X-Men movie, but it's something I've been toying with for a little while anyway.

Been a huge X-Men fan since I was in middle school, and I thought it was high time Apocalypse and Sinister got their time on the silver screen. And yes, I realize he's actually Mr. Sinister, but for the purpose of the movie, I'm dropping the "Mr." because in a lot of people's eyes, the "Mr." part might seem really corny. So he's just Sinister.

Apocalypse as a villain is an obvious choice, and Sinister gives me a legitimate reason (and way) to bring back Cyclops and Jean. By bringing those two back and letting Sinister into the fray, I hope to have an X-Men film that won't focus seemingly only on Wolverine. He'll be in the movie, because X-fans the world over would kill me with their optic blasts and adamantium claws if he wasn't, but he won't be the focus this time.

Apocalypse will use Sinister in his scheme to take Magneto's message to the next step: not only human subservience and/or genocide, but a new world order in the truest sense ... since Apocalypse has been around since before ancient Egypt, he's had a while to enact grand schemes. Part of that would be the Legacy Virus, designed to wipe the world of mutants (and not in a nice, seemingly willing way the "cure" from X3 was). Sinister, on top of monkeying around with Cyke and Jean, will be Apocalypse's pawn in the whole thing.

Oh, yeah ... and what will become of the X-Men without Xavier? Or will they be without him ... ?

I've Noticed Something

In a lot of ways, I'm having an easier time planning and writing Funny Books (also known as Please Don't Sue Me, Kevin Smith!) than I am with either Bounty or Notna. I'm not sure what that is, aside from the obvious differences in each screenplay. With Bounty and Notna, I realize I'm dealing with fantastic, out-of-this-world material, stuff likely to be heavy of mysticism and special effects and all that. So not only do I have to worry about all sorts of convoluted continuity, I have to explain the unexplainable and make sure my fight sequences and all that are insanely over-the-top (for a prime example, see the fights in Spiderman 3). Over-the-top's not necessarily a strength of mine, so that's difficult.

But Funny Books ... I'm just whipping through that outline, plotting out all my characters and establishing pretty easily all the relavent plot points and all that shit. If this keeps up, I might have the first draft of the script ready and done within the next month or two.

Two More

Okay, now there are two more screenplays I'm working on:

Literal Movie (working title): This is actually a movie my friends Kenny and Beth are writing; I'm just converting what they write into screenplay format and help make sure there's an actual story here and not just an hour of random jokes and shit. It's really hard to describe; kind of like Seinfeld meets Family Guy.

Funny Books (working title): I love Kevin Smith's work, and I've always been a Chasing Amy fan. This movie is somewhat in that vein, what with the comic book artists and the love and shit, but there's a lot of other stuff to love here too. A tale of love, death and loss, kind of a Chasing Amy meets Jersey Girl.