Thor is my absolute without question favorite comic character. The biggest writing influence that I ever had, was the writer and artist of Thor back in the 80's named Walter Simonson. Just an incredible storyteller. Very big LOTR fan, and I hope that Thor's movie is influenced by LOTR, much the way LOTR was influenced by norse mythology.

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/580/580929p1.html

I really should get busy with finishing my script, because they need one, and although I have about as much chance as I would at getting Catherine Zeta Jones to leave Michael Douglas' fortune for me, I'm confident that I would be able to write one as good as anything they'll see, especially where these characters and this world are concerned.

I would hope this project gets underway sooner than expected. I'm really standing by my argument that the industry is overkilling the superhero genre and that if Thor project lands anywhere in the midst of countless new superhero projects and other superhero sequels, it'll get killed.

oh and i hope it gets good funding.

Yeah, that's another reason I hope they go more for a LOTR fantasy epic trilogy, and if any comic was made for that, it's Thor. His comic always worked best when it was done as an epic fantasy, and not as standard superhero fare. There are plenty of those to choose from, but far too few fantasy movies with great heroes and villians.

I always recommend that writers get their ideas down on paper as soon as possible.

I had a very negative experience once with waiting until the last minute.

While in school, I wrote a 26 page treatment for a remake of a cult classic british film. My professor, who's a somewhat famous writer/producer really liked the fresh angle of the treatment and suggested I workshop a first draft. I was able to turn in a first draft shortly thereafter and he showed it to a few friends of his and they liked it, so he wanted me to pound out a tighter version to ultimately shop around and hopefully pitch.

Being the wise 20 year old that I was, I still had other projects going on, so I figured it could wait.

Imagine my surprise one day when I read in The Hollywood Reporter than the film I had wrote the treatment and first draft for, was now in Preproduction at Fox. #-o

I had a similar experience with a remake of an anime film but I decided after about 15 months that I didn't have the fortitude to continue on.

Ooh...that sucks that somebody ripped you off. I had a song ripped off before, but was able to sue over it.

I do agree, that it's always best to talk little and write much where that stuff is concerned. I have been so tempted to talk about and post screenplays and such that I've written, but I try to avoid any hassles of seeing somebody else take my ideas and pass them off as their own. It's very easy to change something here or there, and rework somebody elses work or ideas into something you can benefit from.

I would love to start on Thor asap, but I am so entrenched in another one right now, so I'll probably have to put it off for a short time.

Thor would be just awesome. I'm not a huge comic book fan or anything but thor rocks.

I thought at first I'd been ripped off as well but their script for Bedazzled was much lighter than mine. Still, knowing my professor is a friend of Harold Ramis is a wild coincidence.

The worst aspect of screenwriting for me is time management. At any given time, most writers have ideas for dozens of screenplays. It's all just a judgement call in the end. What will benefit from spending a few years in the drawer and what is so topical that it needs to be finished immediately.

And like Bedazzled, sometimes you're working against time and other writers, since there are no real original stories anymore, and someone will beat you to the pitch.

You have no idea how much I wish I had a drawer full of comic book movie screenplays, but who knew? #-o

I do have many very original or always marketable things that I've written, from every genre, so I've got my bases covered there, but timing is something that means the difference of a sale or not. (besides quality, but even that isn't neccesary if you've read some of the scripts that have been bought)

Time is definitely the problem, because between work, life, and recreational stuff, there are only so many hours in the day to commit, especially since music stuff is always first for me, but I like to write, so I make time as often as I can, but it would be easier to give that time if I did it for a living.

The funny thing is, most of the people I knew in school had pretty good radar about these things. For the most part, we were able to look down the pipeline, starting in 1995, and know what genre would still be viable in 5 years, since a typical turnaround time from conception to locked print could be between 2-5 years, depending on scope.

Everything pointed to either quirky crime films or Speed on a ______ films being the easiest pitch.

And not a single person I knew guessed that, following the collapse of DC at Warner, Marvel would explode the way it did.

Thor would be awesome. Hey, I could see William Dafoe as Loki. He's just so good at playing a bad guy. Or maybe John Malkovich.