With the re-scheduling of Ghost Rider to 2007 it might appear that retailers would be missing out on a key merchandising opportunity in 2006, but the vagaries of Hollywood scheduling have more than made up for Johnny Blaze's disappearance by bumping Alan Moore's V for Vendetta from Guy Fawkes Day to St. Patrick's Day (March 17th). Even though Alan Moore disdains all movie adaptations of his work, V for Vendetta is bound to move a lot of books and it represents the first key movie merchandising opportunity for pop culture retailers in 2006.
But V for Vendetta is hardly the first film of interest to pop culture retailers to open in 2006--it's just the first one with the potential to sell a lot of graphic novels. The vampires vs. werewolves sequel Underworld: Evolution debuts on January 20th, while the first Curious George film and the latest screen incarnation of The Pink Panther un-spool for the first time on February 10th.
In the spring the critics and box office prognosticators will be dithering over the prospects of Mission Impossible 3 and the Da Vinci Code, but savvy retailers should remember Ghost World and pay attention to the Daniel Clowes-based Art School Confidential, which premieres at Sundance and opens in theaters on April 28th.
Of course the highest grossing comic book movie of the spring will be Brett Ratner's X-3, which debuts on the 26th and ushers in the full force of the summer movie season. Comic book fans and Hollywood insiders alike will be interested in comparing X-3's box office performance with that of Bryan Singer's Superman Returns, which opens a month later on June 29th. But these two box office behemoths are hardly the summer's only comic book-related movies. My Super Ex-Girlfriend, which opens on July 14th, is a comedy starring Uma Thurman that owes its existence to the cinematic popularity of spandex-clad heroes, but which sprang from the opportunistic imaginations of Hollywood screenwriters rather than from the comic book page. But another superhero comedy, The Return of Zoom, which stars Tim Allen and debuts on August 11th, is based on a comic book, Jason Lethcoe's Zoom's Academy for the Super-Gifted.
Other summer films of interest (though not comic book-related) include Cars, the final Pixar film released through Disney, which comes out June 9th, Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (the Disney Press is planning a graphic novel adaptation), which opens July 6th, and the feature film incarnation of the pastel-hued TV cop series Miami Vice, which debuts on July 28th.
Arriving on September 8th is The Covenant, film that many retailers might overlook, but it is based on a Top Cow graphic novel and might turn out to be a merchandising (as well as a box office) sleeper hit.
The box office totals for the final weeks of 2006 might have a hard time competing with this year's Narnia and Kong-driven totals. The by now de rigeur fourth quarter epic fantasy release is Eragon, which debuts on December 15th. The schedule for the final months of 2006 has not been finalized so other films of interest could easily appear including Darren Aronosky's The Fountain (DC has a graphic novel) and the screen adaptation of Frank Miller's Spartan epic, 300. Both of these properties have the potential to sell far more graphic novels than some of the high profile comic book based films mentioned earlier in this article.
