If there's one trend that we hope both The Losers and Kick-Ass will jumpstart, it's one where British comic creators get their due in Hollywood. Particularly because that could lead to these 2000AD movies we've always longed for...


Yes, yes; Judge Dredd is about to get his second chance at big screen stardom (And much-deserved it is, too, considering the mess that was made of his first try) but, as good as John Wagner's political and social satire with added pyrotechnics is, it's really only a taster of what 2000AD has to offer cinema. Here are some other movies that Tharg The Mighty's "Galaxy's Greatest Comic" could give to the world:


Robo-Hunter

Man versus machine... literally. The original comic was essentially "Clint Eastwood as wise-cracking hard-ass private dick in a world populated by robots of every variety from killer to comedic, accompanied by two robotic sidekicks - one of whom is his talking cigar" and, aside from changing the words "Clint Eastwood" to, say, "Will Smith," there's very little about that that doesn't sound like a summer blockbuster waiting to happen.



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Rogue Trooper

Blue-skinned genetically engineered soldiers fighting a future war... Wait, why didn't this comic strip claim that Avatar was ripping it off? 2000AD's archetypal future war series pitched a macho pacifism as one lone clone (Well, aside from his talking, sentient equipment, given the personalities of his fallen comrades) tried to find out who was behind the intergalactic war while staying alive in a universe where everyone wanted him dead. Give it a good special effects budget, and step back to watch the box office dollars roll in.




Devlin Waugh

The Vatican's top supernatural exorcist is a vampire. He also has a body like Pumping Iron-era Schwarzenegger, a face (and personality) like Terry Thomas, and a tendency to find himself in the middle of all manner of supernatural trouble at any given moment. This Judge Dredd spin-off has the potential to be the crossover between Saw and St. Trinians that cinema has always waited for.




Strontium Dog

Which part of "Johnny Alpha is a mutant who travels through time and space tracking down the most evil men in existence (including, at one point, Hitler) armed with sci-fi weaponary and accompanied by a giant trash-talking Viking" doesn't make you wish that this were playing at your local theater right now? Because, let me tell you: That part of you needs to be surgically removed as soon as possible.




ABC Warriors

Heavy Metal Carnage to rival Michael Bay's secret Transformer fantasies could be the key to ABC Warriors' cinematic success. Another future war story, the Warriors were created for battles no human could withstand (Their name comes from their ability to survive Atomic, Bacterial and Chemical warfare) on Mars, but the series outlasted its original "bigotry, even anti-robot bigotry, is wrong" morality to see the Warriors strike out on their own and discover their true identities beyond their original programming. Dollhouse meets Transformers, perhaps...?




Flesh

Start with giant dinosaurs and then add in time travel, robot policing and social satire about our diets and need for ghoulish entertainment, and you have Flesh, one of 2000AD's first ever strips. Set in a prehistoric past where dinosaurs are farmed for their meat by time-traveling cowboys who employ android lawmen and allow tourist trips to earn some extra income, it's Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder" crossed with Food, Inc. and Jurassic Park. Someone give Steven Spielberg a call.


The Ballad of Halo Jones

Arguably Alan Moore's first classic (and with great art by Ian Gibson), Halo was created as a "girl's comic" alternative to the boys-own atmosphere of the rest of 2000AD, and chronicled one woman's journey outside of the passive, pressimistic hedonism of mainstream culture to war and beyond. Although unfinished, due to a disagreement over rights, there's more than enough material in for someone - preferably a director with a strong eye for visuals - to make an impressive, if off-kilter, classic movie.




Tyranny Rex

If ever there was a movie role Lady Gaga was born to play, it's this pop culture iconoclast (and part-lizard lady) who starts out as a genetic thief creating clones of celebrities from stolen DNA before mixing careers as cause célèbre artistic sensation and freelance adventurer... Oh, and then her reality has to get shutdown and rebooted, leaving her as a nun who happens to have unparalleled skill with heavy weaponry. Imagine The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy as written by Bret Easton Ellis, William Gibson and the cast of Project Runway, and you can see why this movie needs to be the science fiction alternative to Sex And The City 2.




Nikolai Dante

Take everything awesome about the very idea of "swashbuckling" - Grand romance, dashing swordfights with bravado and grinning heroes, and corrupt familial dynasties that need bringing down - and place them in a distant future filled with a resurgent Russian empire and genetically-modified humans with special superpowers, and you have the world of Nikolai Dante. If Hollywood can't make a success of a science fictional version of old Errol Flynn movies with added sex and a bigger budget, it's possibly time they just packed up en masse and went home.




Zenith

Okay, I admit it - I included this one just to see the lawyers in the audience get pale, considering the legal status of this series is murky, at best; the series that made Grant Morrison's name may begin like a British Watchmen, but with a parallel-earth spanning war between superheroes, celebrity culture meltdown and Lovecraftian demons all coming into play before the story is done, there's a lot more to this series than another tired take on "real life" superheroes. Also, considering the amount of superheroes-turned-popstars in the storyline, imagine the potential for a killer soundtrack.