If you're a hardcore Booster Gold fan (and if you're on Boosterrrific.com, chances are good), you probably know that his Legion of Super-Heroes Flight Ring is about 500 years old, his mother has no first name, and he has sassed Darkseid to his rocky face and lived to tell the tale.

You've also probably heard that Warner Bros Discovery, by way of James Gunn and DC Studios, has a Booster Gold television series in the works. You might have heard talk recently that the role has been cast and the television series is scheduled to start filming in July, as many corners of the Internet have been reporting just that.

Except, apparently, it's not. Many of the same corners of the Internet are now reporting that James Gunn (or his social media manager) has taken a break from developing the latest movie about Booster Gold's biggest rival, that goody-two-shoes Superman, to throw cold water on those Booster Gold rumors via a post at some social media website or other.

Honestly, at this point, I don't know what to believe. Were the initial reports hoaxes? Or is Gunn just trying to disguise the truth now that the cat's out of the bag? One way or the other, I suppose we'll find out the truth one day, right Superman?

DC Challenge #12, "Phase 12.5" written by Len Wien and drawn by Ross Andru, Frank McLaughlin

Hey, if Superman's not above stealing a whole bunch of newsprint to hide his secret identity, can he really be all that mad at Booster Gold for "borrowing" some dusty old museum pieces to fight crime? (Bet they won't mention that in the Booster Gold television show.)

Comments (4) | Add a Comment | Tags: movies rumors superman television

Rob Snow alerts me that Warner Bros has released a trailer for Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths – Part Three that contains images of Booster Gold.

So I went looking, and sure enough, at about 12 seconds in, there's our boy:

Booster Gold, Red Star, Star Sapphire, Starfire, Starman: what is this, Earth-Shooting Stars?

So whenever that movie comes out (the trailer just says "coming soon"), know that it'll have at least a second or two of Booster Gold in it. At least until the Anti-Monitor kills him.

If you want to see the rest of the trailer, you can find it on YouTube.com.

Thanks, Rob.

Comments (1) | Add a Comment | Tags: crisis on infinite earths movies rob snow youtube.com

Almost a year ago, I shared the news that Skeets could be seen in the then-recently leaked Warner Bros animated movie Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! that may or may not have been canceled by the studio.

In a happy update to that post, the movie was definitely not canceled and has now been released to Max where alert subscribers can finally (legally) briefly see Skeets in a case with a model of Blue Beetle's Bug as Krypto flies through the Hall of Justice!

In case you blink at the wrong time, here's a screenshot:

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with the good news.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: krypto movies scooby-doo

A few weeks back, I posted what comics fan magazine Amazing Heroes had to say about the undeveloped Justice League International television project of 1990. You may recall that the reviewer was not impressed.

However, over the weekend, I was reading a different old comics fan magazine, Comics Scene, and found a second opinion.

In Comics Scene Volume 2, #46, 1994, I came across Frank Garcia's interview with one of the creators of that project, screenwriter Jeff Freilich. In this article, Freilich brags, "The guys who do the JLA title asked us to write issues because they thought we wrote the characters so accurately." Sure, I suppose that could have happened.

Freilich also had thoughts about who should play the heroes:

Playing casting director for a moment, [Jeff] Freilich considers who they might have signed aboard the Justice League.

"Very often the case in television, when fantasizing casting, we would way, ‘We want a young Bruce Willis' and then go out and look for those people," says Freilich. Not prone to stunt casting, Freilich prefers unknowns for many of the heroes. However, if JLA were to be treated as a feature, the game becomes more fun.

"With a cast that large, you can't really afford to use feature film actors," says Freilich. "It's not a question of expense, by the way, it's a question of commitment. If a person is a movie star, they generally don't want to commit to a TV series. They wouldn't be able to work on movies."

When it's suggested that Sam (Jurassic Park) Neill would be a good Maxwell Lord, Freilich lights up and responds positively. "Sam Neill would be a very good Max. When we wrote Justice League, Neill was an unknown. He has done so many things in the last few years. He would be a superb Max Lord."

For Mr. Miracle's boisterous, loudmouthed manager, Oberon, Billy (Willow) Barty (STARLOG #130) snatches the role. "A young version of Billy Barty [would be better]," said Freilich. "He's a bit old. There are quite a few excellent small actors. It's just unfortunate there are very rarely parts for them. Billy Barty is the person you have in mind immediately."

Offering a surprising suggestion for Mr. Miracle, Frielich thinks real-life escape artist David Copperfield would do the job well.

"When they picked Bill Bixby for The Magician, he was already an amateur magician," the writer explains. "When they cast Burt Lancaster as a trapeze artist [in the 1956 film Trapeze], he was an acrobat and an aerial artist before becoming an actor. It always makes sense with someone and using the stunt double throughout. [Performing magic] is difficult to teach people. You have to have a talent for that kind of stuff."

For the two witty male leads, Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, Freilich envisions a young Woody Allen for Beetle and a young Bruce Willis type for Booster. He says Mark Hamill might do Booster's role well, due to its similarity to his portrayal of the Trickster in The Flash. "But I don't know if we would have gone with Hamill or someone new," Freilich muses.

Bruce Willis? Yippee-ki-yay, Booster boosters.

Comments (2) | Add a Comment | Tags: comics scene frank garcia jeff freilich justice league international movies

Since last week I posted that 1991 article about a never-filmed Justice League movie script, I feel bound to report that over the weekend, I bumped into another Booster Gold script on reddit.com.

While Sean(Gary) worked on The Flash in 2021, Sean was doing some work on the script (uncredited and improv). He mentioned to me that he and ezra had been talking about Booster Gold on set in that context. I've been friends with sean since like 2014, we've written a lot together. They apparently talked about Sean as booster being fun so me and Sean ran with it.

Me and him fell in love with the fun and original take Booster could bring to superhero live action media, so we decided to start writing a pitch on spec. The season would have dealt with a time traveling OMAC trying to wipe heros out by stopping their origin moment. So booster, with Rip Hunter, would have traveled to multiple time periods to try and preserve the timeline, thus learning what it means to be a true hero through seeing the origins of others (since he doesn't really have his own organic origin). We have episodes, concept art and the pilot script.

The post goes on to explain that they hoped to eventually sell it to James Gunn/Warner Bros, though it seems that after many obstacles were placed in their way, they've mostly given up on that idea.

You can visit that reddit link above to read more about their plans; you'll even find a link to download the script, if you're so inclined.

The script does indeed have Dirk Davis and Trixie Collins and a lot of other characters Booster boosters will recognize in it, but beware that their Booster is also a bit of potty mouth.

Comments (0) | Add a Comment | Tags: movies reddit.com