An article in New York Magazine's Vulture looks ahead at some of the possible projects for "Harry Potter" director David Yates and what Warner Bros. might be planning to fill in the release schedule over the next few years now that Potter is history with a few comic book projects that sound interesting.
As they note, the world is Yates' oyster with the success of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 which was setting box office records even before it opened, and while he's been spotted reading Stephen King's The Stand for a possible three-movie adaptation, the article also mentions that Yates might tackle a movie based on the popular Vertigo Comics series Fables by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham and Steve Leialoha about famous fairy tale characters living in secret in a section of New York. That comic book has been discussed quite a bit in the last few years as one that might translate well to screen, although it's mainly been discussed as a possible television series rather than as a movie. While Yates would seem perfect for the project, he does seem to have a number of choices and as he told ComingSoon.net, he's going to do a smaller movie first. (The article mentions a possible Al Capone origin story starring Tom Hardy called "Cicero" as one option.)
The second interesting tidbit in that rather expansive article is that now that Jaume Collet-Serra has been hired to direct a movie based on Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira (reported yesterday), that leaves Frank Miller's 300: Battle of Artemisia (formerly Xerxes) open for another director and they're saying that Smart People director Noam Murro has jumped on that opportunity to direct. That will probably have to be confirmed by someone at Warner Bros. or Legendary, although Murro has also been rumored to direct Bruce Willis' Die Hard 5.
Lastly, there have been rumblings in the last few days that Guy Ritchie, who has had such success at Warner Bros. with Sherlock Holmes, is back looking at DC Comics' WWII war hero Sgt. Rock as a possible project to develop next along with producer Joel Silver, a project he left and was then taken over by Constantine director Francis Lawrence (with the intention of doing a more futuristic version of Rock). Ritchie also has a few other possibilities but it does seem like a project Warner Bros. wants to move forward on.
You can read what Silver and Holmes producer Susan Downey told ComingSoon.net about their take on Rock nearly three years ago here and read the full article over at Vulture, including mention of a few other non-comic projects for Ritchie and Yates.
