Eighty years after his creation and following multiple television and film adaptations, 20th Century Fox has reportedly scooped up the rights to bring Flash Gordon back to the big screen. Considering the pop culture property land-grab that is Hollywood tentpole filmmaking, it was inevitable that eventually the pulp comic hero would be in the running again, but Gordon's been done before. A lot. So the inevitable question is: Will this one do it right?
So far all that's known about the new project is that veteran producer John Davis will be handling the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter, and up-and-coming Star Trek 3 scribes J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay have signed on to do the script. Not a bad pedigree, but not a lot to go on either.
But even though little is known about the new adaptation, a lot is known about past incarnations of Flash. The first came just two years after his creation by cartoonist Alex Raymond in 1934 and had the high-flying football star headlining a serial starring a bottle-blond Buster Crabbe. That was followed by a live-action television series in the 1950s and several animated adaptations in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. There was even a notorious 1974 porn parody called Flesh Gordon—which was popular enough to merit an edited R-rated re-release and is a remarkably faithful homage to the old Crabbe serials.
But, standing out from all of those incarnations, it was arguably sci-fi mogul Dino De Laurentiis's 1980 movie that got the tone right. Telling a successful Flash story requires a certain degree of tongue-in-cheek commitment to camp and the producer's now-cult-classic feature film version came complete with a Flash played by one-time Playgirl centerfold Sam J. Jones and backed by a soundtrack by operatic rock legends Queen. It wasn't a huge commercial success, but it nailed the saturated, high-flying classic-pulp feel of the Raymond comic strips.
It's impossible to tell if this latest reboot will emulate that campy formula, especially in the era big hero tentpole films, but fingers crossed that Flash's latest foray into the spotlight will be able to give the pulp hero the high-shine approach his character and concept demand.
