Well, since the initial announcement that 20th Century Fox were working on a Silver Surfer film, there has been absolutely zero new developments worth writing about. Except, perhaps, until now.

CHUD recently reported that Marvel Studios is actively offering writers and directors their pick of characters to be brought to the big-screen as small scale movies in the range of 20 to 40 million dollars. While Silver Surfer isn’t mentioned, other characters such as Dr. Strange, Ka-Zar, Luke Cage, Dazzler and Power Pack were.

The idea is that Marvel want to be able to produce many super-hero films but with less financial risk, allowing Marvel (and Disney) to explore new ways of getting their brand into the market.

Marvel President Kevin Fiege also confirmed to Movieweb recently that the intention is to release two Marvel superhero movies every year.

Says Fiege:

“…certainly we are looking at the next wave. We are going to do two films a year starting in 2011. What is our post Avengers film in 2013 or 2014? There are a lot of characters and meetings going on right now.”

The indication that many smaller movies will be made at 20-40 million seems to apply to third tier Marvel characters. Is Silver Surfer considered a third tier character? My obviously biased answer is “no” especially in context with Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer raking in more than $150M above its budget. I would hope that the powers that be don’t slot it in as a second or third tier character as a 20-40 million Silver Surfer film simply wouldn’t work for this particular character.

So where are we at with the Silver Surfer film? Who knows. The only “hint” that anything might be happening was a slight update one month ago to the IMDB status for the film. I say “slight” because the update was merely a second reiteration that the film is “In active development at Fox.”