Barry Sonnenfeld has been quite the hot commodity as of late after seemingly redeeming himself with a well-received Men in Black III. While the jury is still out on the director’s bankability, the guy knows his way around a movie set and that is good enough to hand over the keys to DC Comic’s The Metal Men.
The thinking here is that it will turn out to be a great ensemble superhero piece in the vein of Fantastic Four. You have five artificially-created characters who represent elements with powers relating to their respective properties. I would not bank on the Wikipedia page for a description as to what these characters are all about though, so the writer should be very important whoever that may be as they will be tasked with creating a narrative that will help this franchise sink or swim.
Expect this latest Sonnenfeld project to be squeezed in between the director’s current works that include a dinosaurs versus aliens movie (for real,) and a rom-com about the end of the world at the hands of an alien invasion entitled The How-To Guide for Saving the Planet.
For those of you looking for an update on Men in Black III, the movie is approaching a franchise best at the global box office, but domestic success has been below expectations resulting in next to no profit for the film. In other words, if the project did not suffer from production delays and budget overruns Barry Sonnenfeld would have made Sony a big pile of money.
[Vulture]