Peter Berg, fresh off successfully directing Will Smith in Hancock, is set to produce and direct a “fresh” take on the Hercules saga called Hercules: The Thracian Wars.
Ryan Condal will write the script, based on, you guessed it, a five issue comic book series by Steve Moore that debuted in May through Radical Publishing. What does that make the comic book adaptation count now? Like 40 or 50? I exaggerate, but surely we’re getting a little carried away here folks.
Berg has already signed up to produce and direct another (seriously, another?) adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune as well. What brought him into the Hercules project was the desire he shared with fellow producer Sarah Aubrey to see the comic book adapted faithfully.
“What resonated for them was that this was character driven, about a character who’s more man than god, with conflicts and redemption,” third producer on the project, Barry Levine, said.
Special Effects company Weta Workshops did some concept art for the comic book (which you can see right here) so it’s reasonable to assume they may do some work on the film as well. It’s definitely a different sort of take on Hercules.
I think a Hercules film could be pretty cool, but there’s already Clash of the Titans in the works along with several other similar projects. Why not produce something different? I really enjoy Peter Berg’s directing style, but why does everyone keep doing the same thing all the time? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Of course, I know nothing about the comic books series so maybe it’s just that good.
Can we have a movie without a superhero in it?
I have a post coming tomorrow (hopefully) that will talk about the number of comic book adaptations…pretty crazy.
WETA is awesome.
I like Berg's work. It feels, for lack of a better term, clean. I don't think he gets bogged down with a lot of extraneous junk in his storytelling.
That said, I'm just going off of a gut feeling and haven't really sat down to test the theory. So, I reserve the right to be totally wrong.
There are so many stories for Hercules, and another one like this is a shit. There is no a bit of historical true in it.. More interesting is thestory for the relations between a thracian priestess of a largest sanctuary in Rhodopes (the land of the thracians) and Alexander the Great. And her phrophecy, that he will become conquer of the world. It's described in the book “Rhodopea, the thracian priestess”. Better, full of thracian mysteries, rites and treasures… and passion..