Superhero news flash

David S Goyer and Jonah Nolan to save The Man of Steel? Greg Berlanti to breathe life into The Flash? The latest buzz on proposed superhero flicks.

Latino Review has the scoop that David S Goyer is to script the upcoming Superman film, Man of Steel. Upping the ante, IGN then wrote that Jonah Nolan (brother of Christopher and co-writer of The Prestige, Memento and The Dark Knight) is to co-write. The film will depart to some extent from the reboot madness of the moment in that it will not be an origin story but rather a new adventure for the hero.

Supe’s childhood, his job on The Daily Planet and his relationships with Lois and Jimmy are already taken as read. Thank you producers. We all know about Clark’s frustrating adolescence and his lopsided love affair with Lois. But what we’d all like to see on the big screen is what Superman does next. Surely he won’t spend the rest of his life nervously jiggling his glasses across the office at Ms Lane before leaping out of the window to rescue a derailed train? Indeed not – the script is apparently to focus on Superman’s battles with arch-nemeses Lex Luthor and Brainiac and milk the Krypton backstory. Superman himself is to be less of a Michael Cera-type nervous geek and his day job at The Daily Planet is under threat as the paper is struggling in the internet age.

The new film is apparently inspired by the direction that comics writer and artist John Byrne took the story in 1986, which debuted with the six issue mini-series The Man of Steel. At the time, he said: “I’m taking Superman back to the basics ... It's basically Siegel and Shuster's Superman meets the Fleischer Superman in 1986.” What this meant in practice was removing some of the more campy elements that had become part of the Superman mythology – which meant goodbye to Krypto the super-dog and the Fortress of Solitude. Clark’s personality was also given a new focus. Out went his teen past as nerdy by day and Superboy by night and in came a tougher and more aggressive persona.

Goyer is most famous for his work on the screenplay for Batman Begins plus his story work on The Dark Knight but he also wrote the screenplay for Blade and co-wrote Dark City. Latino Review got its scoop from an industry source and as such it has not been confirmed officially. The IGN update is here.

In other superhero news, new kid on the block (in directorial terms, at least) Greg Berlanti has been picked by DC and Warner Bros to direct the upcoming The Flash movie. Berlanti is best-known as a producer and writer of TV shows such as Everwood and Dirty Sexy Money before writing and producing for the upcoming Green Lantern movie. Obviously the bigwigs liked his work with men in jumpsuits, hence the gig on The Flash.

Little is known about the proposed film of The Flash. There have been four different incarnations of the Scarlet Speedster since his first appearance in 1940 – at one stage two of the Flashes even met each other when it was revealed they were living in parallel universes. In most instances an individual became The Flash after an unfortunate chemical spill (these accident-prone comic book scientists should really get some sort of safety procedure for their dangerous labs) and was gifted with super-speed, enhanced reflexes and the ability to play fast and loose with the laws of physics.