Hey folks, Harry here and I'm as happy as a kid could get right now! Hollywood Reporter is reporting, as they do, that Matthew Vaughn is in Negotiations to make FLASH GORDON for 20th Century Fox. Now, the world is all a bit higher on Matthew Vaughn than ever before due to the nearly $400 million world wide that KINGSMEN has brought in. But all us movie geeks have been singing his praises since LAYER CAKE... or at the very least, KICK ASS... or perhaps you needed X-MEN: FIRST CLASS to convince you... but I knew from the moment LAYER CAKE played at BNAT that Vaughn was a real deal. The films he's made in its wake have only further convinced me that he's quite the talent.
Now - before you start singing Queen and thinking the 80's film is the be all, end all of FLASH GORDON, I'm going to point you in the direction of more FLASH GORDON awesomery!
First off, FLASH GORDON began life as a newsprint comic page created by the astonishingly talented Alex Raymond. His comic strip captured the imaginations of everyone that read it. Nobody has ever drawn FLASH GORDON's universe with the vision of Raymond... although many have tried and succeeded wildly with their own takes. In the fifties, Mac Raboy brought Flash to vibrant life - then later still we had the E.C. and STAR WARS artist Al Williamson flinging our minds at those wild moons of Mongo!
My first introduction to FLASH GORDON was on MATINEE AT THE BIJOU on PBS and at the early film rooms of Conventions of the 1970s which both ran Buster Crabbe's FLASH GORDON serial... I remember Captain Willie Patterson from Houston touring conventions with his 16mm prints of FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE -and I ate it up. Science Fiction Swashbuckling? Amazing!
Then we had that rather awesome FILMATION FLASH GORDON show and the great FLASH GORDON movie which captured many an imagination! Now... the bummer here is that Vaughn is only in negotiations and not actually physically signed and on a stage already directing FLASH GORDON with a release date already placed upon our calendars! There is a script, but Vaughn will most likely do a polish & I hope he brings in Jane Goldman - as he likes to do, she's amazing.
If Matthew can do to Wide-Eyed Science Fiction, what he did for Pop Spy Fun, then FOX just might have a replacement for STAR WARS... We'll see, won't we... Who would you cast as FLASH, MING, Zarkoff, Dale, Prince Baron, Zoltan, Ming's Daughter!
