Uh-oh Chongo!

We hope you have worn comfy shoes, packed sandwiches, and left word you'll be late back for dinner, because today finds Indie Movies embarking on a spot of boy's own adventuring. We have news on a triple whammy of playtime projects, featuring Ian McShane and Danny Glover sailing out as Blackbeard and Captain Ahab respectively, and writer-director Shane Black reviving pulp hero Doc Savage.

Starting with the most parsimoniously provided for of the three movies; Dragon Fire has been shooting in Utah, under the direction of Ryan Little (whose earlier offering Saints and Soldiers can be viewed for free, here on Indie Movies Online). The film is an adaptation of Herman Melville's revered nautically-themed doorstop Moby Dick - although as the fresh title suggests, there have been some significant amendments to the original text. The obsessive Captain Ahab is still present, in the shape of Danny Glover, as are such supporting characters as Pequod second mate Stubb, who is played by Vinnie Jones. But the albino leviathan conceived of by Melville is absent, supplanted by yes, a dragon. Slash Film have highlighted a TV clip about the making of Dragon Fire, which shows Glover and Jones in their bucolic get-up, and also features writer/executive producer Gil Aglaure talking about the project (“It's Moby Dick... with way more action”).

Looks an ambitious project over which to stretch a reputed $5m budget, doesn't it? Still, let's see how Dragon Fire's eponymous mythic reptile looks in full action, and not simply sat inertly on the floor like a vulcanised rubber mat as he was in the clip, before advocating the scuttling of this particular ship.

Back in 2008 the word was that home of no ideas Universal were courting Night Watch and Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov to deliver his own version of Moby Dick. MTV asked the Russian film-maker about the project last year and he explained that (Herman Melville devotees may wish to look away now, or risk becoming aggravated into an Incredible Hulk/Gordon Brown fury), “The idea is to make it a contemporary movie, like a genre movie for young people. The concept is if we're talking about a creature with supernatural abilities, Moby Dick, then every whaler will have supernatural abilities. They can fly!”. And indeed, if we write common sense off as antiquated a concept as ecclesiastical tithes and invading Visigoths, then why the ding-dang-diddley devil not? The recent success of Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes has left Hollywood scrabbling round for literary classics that can be turned into anachronistic action flicks, with the rapier twits from The Three Musketeers and the pirates of Treasure Island both rumoured to be next in line for a bit of cinematic remodelling. And speaking of pirates...

Heat Vision reports that British actor Ian McShane is in negotiations to take on the role of Bristol-born buccaneer Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. While Jerry Bruckheimer is back producing this fourth Pirates movie, with Johnny Depp also returning as Captain Jack Sparrow, there has otherwise been a sizeable injection of fresh blood into the franchise. Nine man Rob Marshall replaces Gore Verbinski in the director's chair, Penélope Cruz is a likely new leading lady, and now McShane - best known in the US for his roles in Death Race and TV's Deadwood, remembered by a generation of British Sunday teatime telly viewers as twinkling antiques mulleteer Lovejoy - looks all set to glower and menace his way through bad guy chores on an honest to goodness studio blockbuster. Due May 2011, there are two individuals though for whom there would appear to be no room on the boat, with Depp being quoted by Collider a few days ago as remarking that, “there's no Keira [Knightley] or Orlando [Bloom] in there.” Aw, can parts really not be found for those two? Surely every pirate ship needs a plank and mast?

Our final slice of innocently thrilling escapades comes courtesy of pulp hero Doc Savage. Although created by magazine publisher Henry W. Ralston and editor John L. Nanovic in 1931, the ensuing adventures of Doc Savage were largely penned by Lester Dent, the writer with whom the square-jawed brainbox character is most synonymous. Bearing the real name Clark Savage Jr., the Doc is an explorer and inventor, nursing morals so clean you could wrap a newborn baby in 'em. His base of operations is on the 86th floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, while he also makes use of a strange blue dome situated in the Arctic, called the Fortress of Solitude (maybe it is on the same row of Arctic fortresses as Superman's, and they are actually numbered Fortress of Solitude A and Fortress of Solitude B. Must be annoying when they keep getting each other's mail).

Like his do-gooder peers The Shadow and The Green Hornet, Doc Savage crossed over into a variety of media at the apex of his popularity, surfacing on the radio, in paperbacks, magazines, and comic books. He is probably best known to modern audiences for the 1975 movie Doc Savage: Man of Bronze, in which the Doc, his quintet of loyal sidekicks the Fabulous Five, and War of the Worlds producer George Pal attempted to launch a cinematic series that would rival James Bond for longevity. However those lofty ambitions were stillborn, with the final film appearing woefully antediluvian when compared to the New Hollywood offerings that were making waves in that same era. Slated by the critics, it was swiftly gobbled up at the box-office by Spielberg's Jaws, which opened the same month.

35 years is a long time for a movie idea to stay on ice for though, and it has now been confirmed by Variety that a new Doc Savage film will be going into production, with Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black at the helm. Black, whose Last Boy Scout script and prior directorial outing Kiss Kiss Bang Bang both exhibit a fond regard for pulp storytelling, had initially been hired simply to write Doc Savage for I Am Legend producer Neal Moritz, but he has now been confirmed as director too, with the project being set up at Columbia. Assisting Black on the screenplay were Anthony Bagarozzi and Chuck Mondry, the latter of whom wrote the script for Cold Warrior, which Black is due to direct Mel Gibson in. Probably expect to see that before you see Doc Savage.