Heavy Metal Reboot Is Happening
It looks like Heavy Metal is getting a rebooted movie and there will be a number of other projects coming from the printed pages.
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Heavy Metal could be making a comeback here and fans of the old film have more than a few reasons to get excited about what some recent news could mean. That’s because Deadline has it that the publishing company and magazine are working to develop a television and movie division that will begin to convert original stories from the magazine pages into different productions. This is an exciting announcement that could mean a reboot of Heavy Metal movie as well as a number of other new works.
If it gets a little confusing around the name Heavy Metal it’s because in this case, we are referring to both the cult movie as well as the printed magazine. This latest news has teams from the publishing arm partnering with Range Media to take stories out of the printed page and adapt them to all manner of works. Whether this will mean a 1:1 for reboot of the original film, or a new interpretation of stories around a central theme remains to be seen. There are likely to be a number of changes that update some of the original to a new age and time at the very least.
This new Heavy Metal venture will have Tommy Coriale as the head of the new studio and in a recent interview, he explained that the idea around a new movie would most definitely include the character Taarna. She had a story arc in the original movie and according to Coriale still has quite a bit of popularity on the printed page as well. The bird-riding Taarkanian had her story told in the movie and, in terms of characters with definitive commercial appeal, it’s easy to see why they’d lean into her to start.
In addition to a new Heavy Metal movie, the new studio team intimated that they have also been developing other properties as well. There was much in the way of details around what those entail but if they are aligned with this particular brand then they are most definitely set up to push certain ideas around the science-fiction genre and bring a decidedly R-rated sensibility to the screen. That was a hallmark of both the original film and decades’ worth of magazine editions.
Heavy Metal, the magazine, was founded all the way back in 1977 and has gone through a few different iterations over the years. Some of the more famous science-fiction properties first appeared in its pages and it was an industry leader in pushing forth adult-centered stories and even illustrations with a graphic nature. From this standpoint, it separated itself from the rest of the comic book competition in tone alone. But the stories were also top-rate to boot.
Then, in 1981 they released the movie Heavy Metal which was the combination of nine separate stories around the central theme of an evil green crystal called the Loc-Nar and its ability to bring pure evil across the universe. The different stories within the film each had a distinct flavor, but all revolved around this central idea. It was a moderate box office success, but subsequently became a cult classic. A sequel, Heavy Metal 2000 didn’t have the same reception and was largely panned.
It looks like this new venture will look to get the on-screen properties back on the right course and being to develop a stable of Heavy Metal properties including the reboot. It’s an exciting time for the sci-fi genre.
