May
1 WB picks up Miller's "Ronin"

Warner Bros. has optioned the rights to "Ronin," Frank Miller's sci-fi/samurai epic publshed by DC Comics in the early 1980s. Variety's Michael Fleming reports that the studio has Sylvain White, helmer of "Stomp the Yard," set to direct.

The comic was a hot item at the time it came out, being Miller's first major project after his seminal run on Daredevil. It also was one of DC Comics' first forays into creator-owned publishing, which today has blossomed into the likes of Vertigo. The six-issue series was heavily influenced by then artwork of "Lone Wolf & Cub" co-creator Goseki Kojima, whose work was at the time little-known in America. Fan reaction was split between admirers of Miller's attempt tp do something different and those who simply wanted the sort of hard-hitting stories Miller did in Daredevil. The cover design and art style of Ronin was directly incorporated into the early issues of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," which began as a parody of X-Men and Miller before becoming a major kidvid hit on TV.

Pic has a long history in Hollywood and was being developed in the 1990s with a script by Miller and Darren Aronofsky a possibility to direct. That script illustrated the problem of big-budget pictures at the time: The movie would have cost far more to produce than its unusual story and tone would have brought in. This was not popcorn fare that was going to bring in viewers in volume.

That nut appears to have been cracked howevery by another Frank Miller adaptation, "300," which points the way to making visual-effects heavy comics pics for less money and making it easier to take greater creative risks with the material.  Of course, it doesn't hurt in this case that Miller — whose hanging out in Hollywood appears to be paying off — has become a hot property on his own with a growing number of his comics migrating successfully to the big screen.