Blade: Trinity director David Goyer has reportedly signed on to direct a new adaptation of a thing, because he’s alive and awake: Alexander Dumas’ classic novel The Count Of Monte Cristo. Goyer, best known for his hand in (admittedly) the best Batman origin story ever told in Batman Begins (but also for directing Blade: Trinity), is no stranger to what he calls “re-invigorating and contextualizing classic characters that are relatable to contemporary audiences”, though his apparent use of the term ‘graphic novel’ to describe a film he’s making has me worried.
The graphic novel is a medium, same as any other, that can be used to tell any kind of story you could possibly think of that doesn’t require specific use of sound or visual motion. I can’t see how, save for the implementation of panel structure onscreen, his statement could make any sense. That someone whose greatest critical success came from writing Batman pictures has such few reservations about using the term as a catch-all for those elements of graphic novels that made their way into the collective consciousness doesn’t bode well. Also, that Blade: Trinity happened doesn’t bode well.
The Blade: Trinity director will work from a script written by Michael Robert Johnson for Constantin Film whose output includes Paul Anderson’s Resident Evil films and that Fantastic Four movie from the mid 1990s that was never released. Jeremy Bolt (of, er, all those same Resident Evil movies) is producing, with David Goyer set is set to direct.
Someone has to be excited about this. Is it you? It probably isn’t you, but if it is you, let us know why in the comments section below so we can get an insight into how exactly the demented mind of what can only be described as a cinema dumpster really works. The Count Of Monte Cristo is set for release at some point in Earth’s future. We’ll let you know if Blade: Trinity’s David Goyer earns some measure of atonement by then.
