Avoiding the bothersome and time-consuming process of actually writing original stories, filmmakers are building new movies from a heap of dusty board games, old songs and tattered comic books.
"Batman" may not be the only movie adaptation, but the Caped Crusader may set a record for having the most previous lives - in a variety of comic books, a TV series, three television cartoons and two feature films.The latest is the Warner Bros. extravaganza starring Michael Keaton as Batman and Jack Nicholson as his fiendish foil, the Joker.
With an average $18 million riding on every studio release, it pays to stick with retreads. Look at all the "James Bond" sequels. See Jane Fonda remaking "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" - a critically acclaimed movie by Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar that was released only last year. And watch Columbia Pictures redo 1963's "Lord of the Flies."
The plots for "You Light Up My Life" and "Ode to Billy Joe" were taken from old records. "Clue" and the upcoming "Monopoly the Movie" were appropriated from parlor games.
"Batman," like the Superman films and a squadron of other current and future live-action movies, are all inspired by comic books: "Dick Tracy," "Brenda Starr," "The Return of the Swamp Thing," "The Punisher," "Captain America," "Watchmen," "Spiderman," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and Home Box Office's "Tales From the Crypt."
"There's something about the movie business that's really voracious as far as stories and characters are concerned," said director Wes Craven, who transformed a DC Comic into 1982's "Swamp Thing."
"Since the characters and stories in comics are, in a sense, pre-sold, there's a temptation to use a character that's already got a running start."
Mark Freedman, who spun the independent comic "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" into a toy line, a television series and an upcoming feature film, said, "A lot of people didn't realize that comic books were not necessarily a kiddie medium. . . . Some comic books deal with pretty serious topics."
Comics also unfold in a lively style that usually translates easily to film, suggesting offbeat, imaginative cinematography.
"Actually, a comic is a visual movie," said the inventor of "Captain America" and veteran comic author Jack Kirby. "It's a movie drawn by hand."
But sometimes for the filmmaker, a comic's catchy graphic look is as much a blessing as a curse.
Director Alan Rudolph, attempting to make a movie based on Gary Larson's "The Far Side" comic, has labored to convert Larson's distinctive caricatures into living, breathing screen images. After filming a five-minute "Far Side" test, Paramount Pictures passed on the project last year. Rudolph is still trying to convince another studio.
And while comic-book writers never have to worry about the cost of elaborate special effects, movie studios do.
"The real tricky thing in `Swamp Thing' was that the comic book had a tremendous amount of mutation - heads with just hands on them, strange monsters - and at that time the budget for the movie was $2.5 million," said Craven. "The effects were completely outside of our budget. So we had to deal with more human villains and creations. I think we used one dwarf."
Comic-book characters also have a diversity of personalities, and movie studios are bound to select the personality with the broadest possible audience appeal. Take Warner Bros., and its approach to "Batman."
Warner producers didn't seem sure which Batman they wanted. From the final, dark "Batman" script written by Sam Hamm, to the upbeat shooting script doctored by Warren Skaaren, Batman loses his paranoid fears. The Joker, cast as a bizarre, overwhelmingly malevolent criminal in Hamm's screenplay, appears as a droll, almost lighthearted thug in the finished film.
And that may leave some comic-book devotees disappointed.