A new rumor has begun circulating that Michael Green (Heroes co-executive producer and co-writer of the upcoming The Green Lantern) is writing the screenplay to the Silver Surfer movie.

The origin of this rumor seems to have stemmed from an article on Reelz Channel. The article in question, titled ‘Silver Surfer is NOT Dead‘, quotes J. Michael Straczynski’s clarification earlier this week that his now obsolete script has nothing to do with the other Silver Surfer script under development at Fox, leading Reelz to report:

The other script that Straczynski mentions is likely the one that Michael Green, co-executive producer of Heroes and the co-writer of Green Lantern, has been working on for Fox. Green’s script will likely reboot the franchise, in light of the lackluster performance of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

To clarify, Michael Green has been hired by Fox to write the reboot screenplay for the new Fantastic Four movie. There has been no information to suggest he is also working on the Silver Surfer movie.

Whilst the Reelz article does, perhaps inadvertantly, suggest Green is likely working on the Silver Surfer film, the fact is the name of the scribe – if indeed there is one at this time – remains unknown. It should be remembered that active development of a screenplay includes a whole lot of processes in addition to the actual writing. It is entirely possible that at this early stage Fox have yet to select a script or a screenwriter yet.

When they do, I’ll post it here.

Numerous news and blogs continue to report the false rumor that the Silver Surfer movie is dead. Some aren’t reporting that it’s dead, but are reporting that the film is in doubt. All of these reports are false.

The core rumor appears to have started with IGN who took some comments made by J. Michael Straczynski in an interview with Collider out of context.

Now, J. Michael Straczynski has personally clarified the issue to correct the mistake, and has posted this clarification on a number of websites running the story:

Guys…guys…GUYS…whoa, slow down, back the bus up a second.

When I was asked about the Silver Surfer script, I responded about the one I’d written around the time that FF2 was launched, and was designed to pick up where that one left off.

When FF2 didn’t do as well as hoped for, that script was set aside, but that has NOTHING to do with the Silver Surfer script that is NOW under development at Fox with other folks. As far as I know, that is proceeding apace. So the hysteria that’s gripped the nets about “ohmygod the Surfer movie is dead!” is not correct, as I was again referring to only that one specific script tied into FF2, NOT what’s being done now.

J. Michael Straczynski

Whilst JMS is not currently actively involved with the new film, he has confirmed (to his knowledge) that the film is still proceeding and, at the very least, that all comments associating him to confirmation that the film isn’t proceeding are wrong. Hopefully now this rumor can end.

Scene from Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Verifying my speculation in this article, during a recent interview with Collider Babylon 5 guru J. Michael Straczynski has confirmed that his original script for the Silver Surfer movie will no longer be suitable for the upcoming film.

Straczynski wrote a script for a Silver Surfer movie that was slated to be a sequel to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The script was said to be pretty good, taking off immediately from the end of Fantastic Four 2 and picking up the back story of why Silver Surfer was working for Galactus. The story was to follow the Silver Surfer as he raced to his homeworld in fear that his betrayal of Galactus would lead the planet eater back there to destroy it.  Sounds cool, but that’s not the story we’re going to get.

From Collider:

Q: Is your Silver Surfer draft dead?

JMS: What happened was when FF2 didn’t do as well as they hoped it would do, it caused them to call into question a Silver Surfer movie. The script that I wrote picked up right where FF2 left off. So if they do a Silver Surfer film down the road, it’ll have to be its own separate things.

Q: Fans thought the tone wasn’t right. Was yours geared at children?

JMS: It was definitely adult fare. I wanted to tell the origin of the Surfer and get into that whole thing.

From the tone of Straczynski’s reply it would seem he’s also completely unaware of what’s happening with the Silver Surfer film. It’s probably fair to say that Fox don’t intend for him to be involved given that the script for the film is, apparently, in active development as we speak. If true that, to my mind, is potentially bad news – although I say that without any clue as to who is actually working on the script. Fox are deathly quiet on dropping any screenwriter names, so what exactly ‘active development’ means right now is anybody’s guess.

For now, we just have to sit tight and be happy that it is in active development.

Now that we know 20th Century Fox are “working on” a Silver Surfer movie, many fans are wondering if Fox will continue to develop Babylon 5 guru J. Michael Straczynski’s original screenplay or if they’ll head in an all new direction.

If you didn’t already know, Straczynski wrote a script for a Silver Surfer movie that was slated to be a sequel to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Here’s what Straczynski had to say about the premise of his screenplay in an interview with AMCTV:

I was writing it as FF2 was about to come out, and the theory was for it to pick up literally the next frame after the FF2 movie, where you find out why Silver Surfer was there and what happened to him. We would have seen Galactus, his home world, what happened and him trying to get back there, because now that he’s betrayed Galactus, he’s concerned his home world might be in jeopardy.

The script is pretty good, I like it, but whether or not it goes into production, I have no idea.

With the announcement by Fox that they intend to reboot Fantastic Four completely, it would seem reasonable to speculate that Straczynski’s screenplay might now either be out the window or, if it is to be used, will require a certain amount of reworking.  It would be doubtful that the studio would be disappointed enough in a franchise that they would reboot it whilst at the same time being willing to fund a spin-off sequel to the franchise that they no longer want to continue with.

Of course, the corollory to that notion is that Straczynski is now as big a Hollywood name as he is a fanboy favorite, thanks to three Oscar nominations for Changeling, a film he penned.  He also wrote the upcoming Ninja Assassin which is sure to be a hit with The Matrix team behin dit, and has a truck load of films including some epics (such as Lensman) on the way.  So whilst it seems reasonable to speculate that Fox might want an all new direction for the Silver Surfer movie that distances it from Fantastic Four, they may also want to retain Straczynski for the screenplay.

Perhaps the answer will reside in just how tied to Rise of the Silver Surfer Straczynki’s sequel screenplay is.  If only loosely, it may be that the Silver Surfer movie could be developed faster than you might think if the script is already good to go.

Let’s hope so.