'The Silver Surfer' Spinoff Being Planned

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Feeling bullish on the eve of the release of its Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer, Fox has already put a feature spinoff into development that will star the enigmatic Surfer, with J. Michael Straczynski currently crafting the screenplay.

...the studio...apparently hopes to spin the new Surfer franchise in a darker direction to attract the slightly older demographic of its X-Men films. If so, Straczynski, whose original screenplay The Changeling is on director Clint Eastwood's slate, is a logical pick for the Surfer story line.

A longtime writer of television science fiction on The Twilight Zone and Babylon 5, Straczynski has also spent much of the last few years writing for Marvel Comics on properties like "Amazing Spider-Man" and "Thor" (also in development with a Mark Protosevich screenplay and Layer Cake's Matthew Vaughn reportedly negotiating to direct). Straczynski recently penned 15 issues of Fantastic Four for Marvel, and the first issue of his "Silver Surfer: Requiem" series just published last month, with three more in the works.