Merrick again...

Fast on the heels of recent announcements that JUSTICE LEAGUE is headed to theaters comes word that the TEEN TITANS are padding along behind them. This from Hollywood Reporter.

It'll be a live action film produced by Akiva Goldsman. You know who he is.

Goldsman said the tone will be consistent with such recent Warners' comic book fare as "Batman Begins," "Superman Returns" and the upcoming "Watchmen."

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA writer / Co-Executive Producer Mark Verheiden will write the script. Evidently, a permutaion of Nightwing will be one of the Titans.

I suppose it's important to point out that such projects being put into development doesn't necessarily mean that they'll actually be realized. I've nothing at all against the TITANS, but this seems like a little bit much on top of SUPERMAN and BATMAN sequels, the alleged JL film, a possible WONDER WOMAN movie, and God knows what else I'm missing.

Also, this must confront the same quandaries faced by the JL movie. I.e. is this going to be yet another origin film? With all of the characters?

Personally, I believe that the value of the "origin story" is wildly overrated - I think writers / Powers That Be underestimate their audience's ability to simply plunge into a universe and run with it. Take the original STAR WARS movie, or RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. As presented, we didn't know who Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Indiana Jones, Belloq, or Sallah was & we really didn't care. We just figured it out as we went. Now, imagine how messed up those movies would be if we'd had to grapple with setting up all the characters, their backgrounds, and their motivations.

I'd love to see a superhero franchise start-up that was content to simply do its thing and let us figure out what was going on. Hopefully either JUSTICE LEAGUE or TEEN TITANS will take such a chance - I think we can handle it. Otherwise, with so many characters running around, a movie could get pretty messy, pretty fast, and spend more time on what got the characters into the story than on the stories themselves.