I guess it wasn’t a rumor.  Back in the 1980s, Stephen Spielberg was rumored to have an interest in directing a Blackhawks movie.  Possibly with Dan Aykroyd.  It’s thought to have been one of the reasons the Mark Evanier/Dan Spiegel series was commissioned in the early 80s.

Here’s something Evanier has said on the subject:

I believe what happened was that Steve Spielberg was interested in possibly doing something with Blackhawk and somebody even mentioned that Dan Aykroyd wanted to play the character. But I think that was just a pie in the sky, I don’t think there was ever an offer made—that somebody just inquired “Are the rights  available if we want them?” and DC let that leak or it leaked somehow and all of a sudden some other studios went “Hey, maybe we’ll grab Blackhawk if Spielberg thinks it’s hot.” So suddenly DC thought it was advantageous to have a Blackhawk comic back on the schedule. At that point the initial thinking was that they would publish it as a quarterly. DC had a couple writers and artists under contract with them that they really didn’t want to use on the books that they cared about. So they initially suggested another writer and artist whom they just needed to find work for because they had signed contracts—to do Blackhawk and knock it out.

Flash forward to today’s news in Variety:

The prolific director and his Amblin Entertainment are teaming with Warner Bros. to produce action-adventure “Blackhawk,” with the intention of Spielberg directing.

David Koepp, a regular Spielberg collaborator, is working on the script.

Wow.  Talk about a long-gestating project.

Blackhawk, in it’s original form, was a comic about a group of international aviators forming a private unit to fight the Nazi’s.  Blackhawk was the codename of the Blackhawk squadron’s leader.  We’ll all just pretend the short-lived mod superhero phase of the comic didn’t happen and stick with the pilots/soldiers of fortune angle.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Wow, I’m reading the Quality Comics run of Blackhawk (1941-56) at the public domain site Comic Book Plus.

    Some of those WWII-era comics are incredibly grim and brutal. In one story, Blackhawk captures a Nazi officer, throws a rope over a tree limb, and hangs him. In another story, the Blackhawks gleefully decapitate Japanese soldiers, and Blackhawk himself utters the immortal line: “Come on, Chop-Chop! Let’s kill Japs!”

    I was also struck by how many characters commit suicide in those stories. I assume nothing like that will happen in the Spielberg movie, if it’s made.

    There was a Blackhawk movie serial in 1952 (starring former Superman Kirk Alyn), which has been on YouTube and may still be there.

  2. Spielberg is already committed to directing a West Side Story remake and a fifth Indiana Jones movie (neither of which I’m excited about), so this Blackhawk movie could be many years away … if it happens at all.

    Hopefully he’ll ignore the DC issues (except for the 1982-84 Evanier-Spiegel run, which I liked), and base the movie on the classic Quality version.

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