Screenwriter Dan Mazeau gives an update on Bleach, The Flash, and Jonny Quest

With today’s release of WRATH OF THE TITANS, we will get to see if screenwriter Dan Mazeau is the man for BLEACH, THE FLASH, and JONNY QUEST. Yes, he’s taking on all of those adaptations.

In an interview with IFC (via GeekTyrant), Mazeau gave updates on each of the projects. Starting with THE FLASH, “Warner Brothers is in the process of figuring out what their method is for releasing their superhero movies. They had ‘Green Lantern’ come out, and I think ‘Flash’ is high on the list of what would be next.”

In terms of choosing the man behind the suit, Barry Allen seemed to be the one they wanted. The writer continue talking about the approach he wanted to take with the character, “It’s a matter of a lot of things coming together — the right story and the right filmmaker and the right sort of visual approach to Flash, because he can’t just be a guy who runs fast. That was important to me while I was writing my script. Fingers crossed, though — hopefully there will be some news soon.”

The quest for finding Jonny Quest:

“It’s difficult for a movie to come together. You have to get the right pieces. One of the challenges with ‘Jonny Quest’ is that you have a lead who’s a young kid. The movie stars that are young kids are few and far between, but Dan Lin and the guys over at his production company are working on it and hopefully there will be something soon.”

“It’s a cool one, though,” he added. “I think it’s something that could make for a real amazing movie if done right. ‘Jonny Quest’ combines all this amazing wish fulfillment as a kid, but also there’s real danger to it. There’s real weight to it. People die in the ‘Jonny Quest’ cartoons. I think ‘Spy Kids’ was fun, but it’s lighter than what ‘Jonny Quest’ would be. Making sure it has a little edge to it was important to me, and I know it was to Dan and the other producers, too.”

The adaptation of BLEACH:

“I love ‘Bleach!’ ‘Bleach’ is awesome,” laughed Mazeau. “It’s been a long process getting to write the script. Getting the rights from the Japanese company that owned them was a complicated process. But early on we set down with Tite Kubo the creator and the publisher of the series, and we had a long meeting, making sure we’re respectful to the property. Nobody wants to, well… Let’s just say that if you enjoyed [the live-action] ‘Dragonball Z’ movie, that’s great, but I thought it was a noble effort that ultimately didn’t succeed. That’s what we’re trying to avoid. We want to make sure this movie lives up to what the manga is.”

“I’m currently working on ‘Bleach’ and the idea is to set it in Japan and really be respectful to the source material,” he added. “It’s an amazing story. I’ve been shorthanding it as an ‘action-adventure Sixth Sense,’ but obviously on a bigger canvas than that. So I’m incredibly excited about that. It’s a good one.”