Tobey Maguire is joining up with producer (I am Legend, Evan Almighty) Neal H Moritz to finance the new comic book movie Afterburn. The comic hit stands in January of this year and is published by Red 5 Comics. Comingsoon.net tells us what Afterburn is about:
A sci-fi adventure set against the backdrop of a postapocalyptic Earth, whose Eastern Hemisphere was destroyed by a massive solar flare, leaving what life remains mutated from radiation and fallout. The story revolves around a group of treasure hunters who for the right price extract such objects as the Mona Lisa, the Rosetta Stone and the Crown Jewels while facing rival hunters, mutants and pirates along the way.
At this point there is no one signed to adapt Afterburn.
Maguire producing a comic book flick makes a lot of sense after making so much loot in the Spiderman series, and I’m glad he’s chosen this one. The comic is written by two former web guys, Paul Ens (past director of starwars.com and long time friend of Movie Blog Editor John Campea) and Scott Chitwood (contributer of superherohype.com and comingsoon.net) and is published by Calgary based Red 5 Comics. Tobey could have tossed his bankroll at a tried and tested marvel comic or some reliable remake but instead he’s taking a chance on a very new comic movie created by a couple of Canadian web folks.
And why not? The story is interesting and adventurous, the creators aren’t famous or freakish (yet) and with veteran Neal Moritz also stepping up to the table with a fistful of cash this film is off to a very good start even before the screenplay has been written. If some solid actors and a decent script join the producers on this film I think the forecast for Afterburn could be very hot.
