Chris Staros of Top Shelf Productions announced today that Hollywood Producer Joe Singer (Dante's Peak, Dr. Doolittle) and entrepreneur Janet Jensen's new production company, Singer/Jensen Entertainment, has optioned the rights to Top Shelf Production's comic, Mephisto and the Empty Box for development as a feature film. Written by Jason Hall and illustrated by Matt Kindt, Mephisto and the Empty Box is part of the Pistolwhip series, which was recognized as one of the Top 10 comics of 2001 by the alternative-friendly list-makers at Time Magazine's on-line site. Michael Browning (Bad Company, Six Days, Seven Nights) will pen the screenplay for the film, which like the comic will mix the magical and the metaphysical into an intriguing brew of elliptical storytelling.
Top Shelf Productions, which was nearly shut down when book distributor LPC had to file Chapter 11 (see 'Publishers React to LPC Bankruptcy'), is back on its feet thanks to a It's a Wonderful Life-like outpouring of support from the comics world which brought in over 1,000 orders in just a matter of days. With all the success of Spider-Man, observers may forget that in its own modest way last year's Ghost World was a very successful, profitable, and ultimately influential film, albeit at the other end of the budget spectrum from the $130 million dollar Spider-Man film. It is quite possible that alternative comics like Dan Clowes' Ghost World and Hall & Kindt's Mephisto will be supplying the movies with material long after the current fad for cinematic heroes in spandex is over. 
