The Hollywood trades are reporting that Columbia Pictures is ready to finance Tonight, He Comes, a dark superhero tale written by Vincent Ngo, as a vehicle for Will Smith, who just reaffirmed his box office potency with the $45 million opening of Hitch. Ngo's script, which is not based on any specific comic book and which features a bored and depressed superhero who crash lands in Sheepshead Bay, Long Island, has been around Hollywood for six years, but until now it has had no takers (although as Variety noted, it 'has long been considered one of the better unmade scripts in town).  

Perhaps the studio will tailor the screenplay to fit Smith's considerable gift for comedy, or maybe he wants to tackle a darkly different take on a popular genre in order to gain some well-deserved critical attention -- it should be interesting to see if this film will get made and how the project will turn out.  Jonathan Mostow, who directed Terminator 3, is on board to direct Tonight, He Comes if Smith signs off on a new draft of the screenplay by Vince Gilligan.

Although some might cite the success of Pixar's The Incredibles and Columbia's new-found interest in Tonight, He Comes as evidence that Hollywood studios will just rip off the conventions and conceits of superhero comics to create their own 'original' superhero tales and avoid the greedy clutches of comic book publishers turned licensing houses, Tonight and The Incredibles could also be seen as confirming and even legitimizing a film genre that was once considered the lowest form of 'popcorn' movie.  In a year in which a Spider-Man movie made a number of critics' Ten Best Films lists, is it any wonder that the superhero genre can inspire the gentle parody of The Incredibles or an attempt to shoehorn darker and murkier elements into narratives which have traditionally been about the elemental clash of good and evil?  Is this evidence that superhero films have come of age -- or have they jumped the shark?  Time will tell.