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A superhero film, superhero movie, or superhero motion picture is a film that is focused on the actions of one or more superheroes: individuals who usually possess superhuman abilities relative to a normal person and are dedicated to protecting the public. These films typically feature action, adventure, fantasy or science fiction elements, with the first film of a particular character often including a focus on the origin of their special powers and their first confrontation with their most famous supervillain or archenemy.
Witchblade is a comic book series published by Top Cow Productions, an imprint of Image Comics, which ran from November 1995 to October 2015. The series was created by Top Cow founder and owner Marc Silvestri, editor David Wohl, writers Brian Haberlin and Christina Z, and artist Michael Turner.
Marc Silvestri is an American comic book artist, creator and publisher. He currently acts as the CEO for Top Cow Productions.
Witchblade was produced by Top Cow Productions, Inc., and Halsted Pictures in association with Warner Bros. Television. The Turner Network Television film made its debut August 27, 2000. The strong ratings performance of the two-hour action-thriller led to the TNT original series, Witchblade (2001–2002).
Dan Halsted is an American film producer and talent manager, best known for producing such films as Garden State, Any Given Sunday and The Virgin Suicides.
Warner Bros. Television (WBTV) is an American television production arm of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
Plot
When one of her best friends is murdered, NYPD homicide detective Sara Pezzini (Yancy Butler) is bitter at being unable to bring her killer to justice. Sara is certain the killer is Tommy Gallo (Conrad Dunn), a legendary hit man who seems untouchable.
Sara Pezzini is a fictional superheroine starring in the Witchblade series. Sara also appeared in a Turner Network Television live-action feature film and TV series of the same name and she was portrayed by Yancy Butler. She is an NYPD homicide detective whose life changed when she came into contact with a powerful ancient weapon known as the Witchblade, which bestows its wielder with supernatural powers.
Yancy Victoria Butler is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Natasha Binder in the 1993 film Hard Target, Jess Crossman in Drop Zone, and Detective Sara Pezzini on the TNT supernatural drama series Witchblade.
Conrad Dunn is an American actor. He began his screen career with the role of Francis "Psycho" Soyer in Stripes (1981). Working for some ten years under the name George Jenesky, he achieved soap-opera stardom in Days of Our Lives as Nick Corelli, a misogynistic pimp who evolved from bad guy to romantic lead. He returned to the name Conrad Dunn and began working extensively in Canadian as well as U.S. film and television. He excels as a villain, and has found depth in such TV films as We the Jury (1996) and the miniseries The Last Don (1997–98). For two seasons he portrayed the freelance detective Saul Panzer in the A&E TV series A Nero Wolfe Mystery (2001–02).
After one of Gallo's henchmen assaults her partner, Danny Woo (Will Yun Lee), Sara pursues him into a museum where the artifacts of Joan of Arc are among those displayed. While searching for Gallo's man, Sara is momentarily transfixed by a metal gauntlet in a display case–and is startled by a mysterious figure (Eric Etebari) who vanishes as quickly as he appears. During a savage gunfight in the museum, the display case is shattered and the gauntlet careens through space and finds Sara's arm, miraculously protecting her. In time it appears that all of these events have converged through the machinations of a billionaire named Kenneth Irons (Anthony Cistaro), a man obsessed with an artifact called the Witchblade.
Will Yun Lee is an American actor and martial artist. He is best known for his roles as Danny Woo in the supernatural drama Witchblade and Jae Kim in the sci-fi series Bionic Woman. He has also appeared in the films Die Another Day (2002), Elektra (2005) and The Wolverine (2013). He had a recurring role as Sang Min in Hawaii Five-0, played one of the bodies of series protagonist Takeshi Kovacs in Altered Carbon, and voiced Wei Shen in the game Sleeping Dogs (2012).
Joan of Arc, in French Jeanne d'Arc or Jehanne, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans", is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint. She was born to Jacques d'Arc and Isabelle Romée, a peasant family, at Domrémy in north-east France. Joan claimed to have received visions of the Archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The uncrowned King Charles VII sent Joan to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's coronation at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory.
Eric Etebari is an Iranian-American actor, model and musician. He appeared in Witchblade, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Lincoln Lawyer. He is also known for his portrayal of Dallas in the video game PAYDAY 2.
The Witchblade is a magical weapon that chooses who will wear it–and it has chosen but a few warriors, all of them women, throughout the centuries. To understand the Witchblade and why she was chosen to wield it, Sara embarks on a difficult search for self-discovery and justice.
Production
In April 1998, Turner Network Television announced plans for the two-hour live-action feature film, Witchblade, to premiere in early 1999 as part of the cable network's significant increase in original programming. The film was to be the pilot for an hour-long TNT series that would be filmmaker Oliver Stone's first drama series for television.[1] Executive producer Stone had taken Top Cow's project to Warner Bros. Television, which agreed to finance development and took Witchblade to TNT, a sister company in the Time-Warner family.[2] In October 1999, the pilot film was still in development with Stone's company, Illusion Entertainment;[3] but when filming began in February 2000, Stone was no longer attached to the Witchblade project. Instead, Witchblade was executive produced by Dan Halsted, Stone's former partner, and Top Cow Productions' Marc Silvestri.[4]
William Oliver Stone is an American writer, filmmaker and conspiracy theorist. Stone won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay as writer of Midnight Express (1978). He also wrote the acclaimed gangster movie Scarface (1983). Stone achieved prominence as director/writer of the war drama Platoon (1986), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director and the film received Best Picture. Platoon was the first in a trilogy of films based on the Vietnam War, in which Stone served as an infantry soldier. He continued the series with Born on the Fourth of July (1989)—for which Stone won his second Best Director Oscar—and Heaven & Earth (1993). Stone's other notable works include the Salvadoran Civil War-based drama Salvador (1986); the financial drama Wall Street (1987) and its 2010 sequel Money Never Sleeps; the Jim Morrison biographical film The Doors (1991); the satirical black comedy crime film Natural Born Killers (1994); and a trilogy of films based on the American Presidency—JFK (1991), Nixon (1995) and W. (2008). His latest film is Snowden (2016).
"As with all things Hollywood it was several train wrecks that somehow made it to the station", said executive producer Marc Silvestri. "Honestly, it amazes me how anything gets produced at all." Silvestri attributed Stone's departure to a creative dispute with TNT.[5]
The teleplay by J. D. Zeik is a loose adaptation of the Top Cow comic book. "We use the comic book to get the essential DNA of the story", director Ralph Hemecker said. "We've maintained a lot of the elements of the original eight issues of the comic book ... making it more of a character-driven piece."[6]
"Emergence", the episode that begins the second season of the Witchblade television series, uses scenes from the pilot film in presenting an alternative scenario after Sara uses the powerful weapon to reverse time.
Witchblade was the top-rated movie for the week of August 21–27, 2000, earning a 4.5 Nielsen rating (3,491,000 households) for its premiere broadcast. The TNT Original also was the top movie among the key adult demographics 18–49 (3,157,000) and the most-watched program among adults 25–54 (3,631,000). The thriller was still the number-one original movie among adults 18–49 and 25–54 in October 2000, when TNT announced that it had ordered 11 one-hour episodes of an action-drama series into production.[8]
The WB Television Network, a sibling of TNT in the Time Warner media conglomerate, selected Witchblade as the debut film for a new Tuesday-night movie series in May 2001. In its broadcast-television debut, the movie drew 5.2 million viewers–matching the numbers the WB earned with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the previous season, and topping the WB's season average of 4.2 million viewers.[9]
On TNT, Witchblade was reprised June 5, 2001, introducing the Warner Bros. TV series of the same name, which began airing a week later.
Sharp and sexy Yancy Butler is the star, along with an intriguingly lethal weapon called The Witchblade, in the thriller of that title ... While investigating the death of a woman friend, Sara is ambushed by vicious bad guys, but is saved by the ancient weapon, which over the centuries has been the servant and master of many other women possessing her strength of mind, body and will. From then on, it's Sara's to use and, just as importantly, to control. We believe Top Cow comic fans will not be the only ones to fall under this heroine's spell. The Witchblade is all bang, bang action, done with compelling professional skill! Ah, a winner!
Based on a comic book, TNT's two-hour Witchblade is a raucous concoction, filled with action, loud music and loads of visual effects. Paradoxically, it's also dull– a gigantically overblown cliché that tries to substitute an ever-shaky camera and fast-paced editing in place of character and story.
Add it all up, and everything in Witchblade seems like a cliché convention, up to and including Kenneth Welsh's superior officer, who gruffly asks for Sara's badge. Only Butler, who takes all of this seriously enough to look anguished at all times, deserves none of the blame for this meltdown. That look of anguish, though, could be explained simply by her having read the script, and comprehending what she and her agent had gotten her into.
By default, the appeal of Witchblade rests almost exclusively on Butler, who headlines as the movie's reluctant superheroine. While undeniably attractive, Butler uses more than her good looks here, turning in an expressive performance that does the seemingly impossible: lending three dimensions to a comic book character. Be warned that the plot, which involves Sara in a bloody war with a Mafia kingpin played by Conrad Dunn, is unapologetically violent, with enough explosions and gunfire to warrant a UN peacekeeping force. On that score, director Ralph Hemecker's Witchblade seems true to its comic book source material. If you like that sort of thing, then Witchblade is the thing for you.
The telefilm is true to its pedigree, and that's good and bad news. The visuals are cool and, occasionally, nicely subtle as our heroine, Sara Pezzini, flashes her new powers of super speed and martial arts skill. But the characters as scripted are thin.... Things move a little too fast at TV series speeds. In fact, it's too fast for an introductory feature. The personal stuff doesn't get its due. Although we learn that Sara had a heroic father, also a cop, we don't see them together in flashback.... Watch out for leaps in the story's internal logic that may have you shaking your head. But hey, relax! It's only a telefilm. Soon, perhaps, it will become a series or give birth to sequels.
Witchblade has its moments. Most come from some fine Matrix-like action sequences and a bewitching performance by Yancy Butler as Det. Sara Pezzini. Butler not only looks good– although her clothes don't get torn off quite as often as in the comic book– but she is a smart actress and buff enough to carry off the action scenes. It's hard, as an actor, to project credibility as a superhero with powers far beyond those of mortal babes but Butler manages the feat. Butler, however, can't carry the film by herself– no matter how hard she tries– and Witchblade ends up being no better than an interesting disappointment.
While there are small problems with Witchblade, none of them has to do with the casting of Yancy Butler as the latest in a long line of kick-butt crime fighters.... Yes, Butler is beautiful in a darkly exotic way, but she is also athletic and physical. She's believable trading shots and punches with bad guys. At the same time, Butler brings a certain openness to her character of New York City homicide detective Sara Pezzini.... Witchblade has some cool special effects and well-choreographed fight scenes. But the rapid-fire editing technique is a tad over the top, and the music is often a substitute for tension.
This is not kid stuff. Plenty of bodies hit the floor during this film, which is part supernatural adventure, part urban police drama and, sure, part comic book.... It's uneven, and, after a high-impact, fast-paced opening, it drags badly in the middle. But it recovers nicely for a kick-smash conclusion.
Being chosen to battle "Earth's darkest evil forces" is risky business. So is turning a popular fantasy comic into a movie. Chances are, the details– from casting to costumes to special effects– will never satisfy fanatics. At the same time, staying faithful to a comic book may leave the uninitiated completely clueless. Speaking as one of the clueless, that's the big problem with TNT's Witchblade. The premise is hard to grasp and, once grasped, seems (how can I put this politely?) more than a little ludicrous.
Fans of the Top Cow comic book Witchblade have been drooling over the possibilities ever since they got word the cult favorite was being made into a TV movie. Their time has come.... The fans, who can be rabid and vocal, should not be disappointed despite changes for the TV version. Those unfamiliar with the mystical tale have plenty to enjoy as well.
Based on a popular comic book of the same name, Witchblade is a new, silly, convoluted, tiresome made-for-TV movie from Turner Broadcasting.... As Sara, Yancy Butler is strong and sexy, speaking in a deep, smoky voice reminiscent of Kathleen Turner. As Jake, David Chokachi exhibits big hair– bigger than anything the boys on Beverly Hills 90210 ever wore– and big pecs, but no sizable acting talent. The best performance in Witchblade is delivered by Conrad Dunn as the sociopathic Gallo.
Television is like kryptonite to comic-book heroes.... Don't fault the cast: Yancy Butler makes for a sufficiently sultry Sara Pezzini, the cop with a little something extra. But what she's missing is something that she couldn't bring to the role: the look of it all. Maybe that's why comics don't translate well to TV or even movies: because you can draw things that you just can't re-create on film.
Witchblade has lots of action scenes to please martial-arts fans, with some great special effects that help overcome the slim and highly predictable plot.
There are some differences between the comic created by Marc Silvestri and the television show, so expect a lot of guff from fanboy purists.... But there is a respect in the television show for the comic genre, no attempt to belittle the intelligence of the audience. And, thankfully, no camp. Could it be that Hollywood is finally getting the message that serious interpretations of solid comics sell?
Awards
2001, Nominee, Saturn Award Best Single Genre Television Presentation Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films
2001, Nominee, Golden Reel Award Best Sound Editing, Television Movies and Specials–Dialogue & ADR Michael E. Lawshe, supervising sound editor/supervising ADR editor; Jennifer Mertens, supervising sound editor; Virginia Cook-McGowan, supervising dialogue editor; Jessica A. Dickson, ADR editor; Bruce M. Honda, dialogue editor Motion Picture Sound Editors
2001, Nominee, Golden Reel Award Best Sound Editing, Television Movies and Specials–Effects & Foley Michael E. Lawshe, supervising sound editor; Timothy A. Cleveland, Paul J. Diller, Kenneth Young, Eric C. Hosmer, Rick Hromadka and Wayne O'Brien, sound editors; Kerry Malony, Foley editor Motion Picture Sound Editors
Home video releases
In April 2001, Warner Home Video released Witchblade in Australia in PAL-format VHS. The 91-minute film was rated M (medium level violence, supernatural theme) by the Classification Board of Australia.[10]
In July 2008, Witchblade was released as part of Witchblade–The Complete Series, a seven-disc set that comprised the feature-length pilot and all 23 episodes of the TV series. Although the widescreen Region 1 DVD set from Warner Home Video features an all-new soundtrack selected by the executive producer, the songs in the series pilot were not replaced. ISBN1-4198-0424-3
Related Research Articles
Top Cow Productions is an American comics publisher, a partner studio of Image Comics founded by Marc Silvestri in 1992.
Michael Layne Turner was an American comics artist known for his work on Witchblade, Fathom, Superman/Batman, Soulfire, and various covers for DC Comics and Marvel Comics. He was also the president of the entertainment company Aspen MLT.
Fiona Kai Avery is a comic book and television writer. Avery was hired as a reference editor for the fifth season of Babylon 5, and later continued in that role for the failed spin-off Crusade. Avery contributed several scripts for the series, including "The Well of Forever" and "Patterns of the Soul", as well as the unfilmed "Value Judgements" and "Tried and True". Following the cancellation of Crusade, Avery turned to comic book writing, working for Marvel and Top Cow on titles including The Amazing Spider-Man and the X-Men range. Her more recent work includes three spin-offs of J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars - Bright, Voices of the Dead, and Untouchable - as well as her own creation, Araña.
The Magdalena is an American comic book superheroine character created by Joe Benitez, David Wohl and Malachy Coney for Top Cow Productions.
Kenneth Irons is a fictional supervillain. He is depicted as the person behind nearly every evil deed in the Top Cow series Witchblade.
David Wohl is an American comic book writer and editor. He is best known as an editor at Marvel Comics and Top Cow Productions and, at the latter, writing The Darkness and Witchblade.
Brian Haberlin is an American comic book artist, writer, editor and producer. He is best known as the co-creator of the Witchblade franchise and for his digital art style.
Witchblade is an American television series that aired on TNT from 2001 to 2002. The series is based on the Witchblade comic book series, and followed a pilot film that debuted in August 2000. Some of the episodes were written by Ralph Hemecker, Marc Silvestri and J.D. Zeik.
The Angelus is an American comic character featured in publications by Top Cow Productions. Initially appearing in the first lineup of The Darkness in 1997, the Angelus has featured as an antagonist and occasional supporting character in issues of The Darkness and The Witchblade. Described as the equal and opposite of the Darkness, as well as essentially being the mother of the Witchblade, the Angelus is a powerful opponent that has challenged both Jackie Estacado and Sara Pezzini on several occasions. She's also made cameos in a few other Top Cow titles.
Daniella "Dani" Anastasia Baptiste is a fictional, comic book superheroine in the series Witchblade, published by Top Cow. The character was introduced in the one-hundredth issue, becoming the series' co-lead. An athletic young dancer, Dani becomes the new host of the Witchblade, a mystical gauntlet that grants its host an assortment of powers. The series' story arc then shows the character losing the gauntlet to its original host, but later taking hold of the Angelus, one of the two primal forces of the universe.
The Tomb Raider comic book series are based on the video game franchise Tomb Raider, currently produced by Crystal Dynamics, which features the character of Lara Croft. The original series of comics, which were released between 1999 and 2005, were published by Top Cow and were primarily based on the games released by Core Design. In 2014, following the reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, the series was revived and is currently being published by Dark Horse Comics. The new timeline of events is based upon the rebooted iteration of Lara Croft and her adventures.
Eric Basaldua is an American comic book artist
Stjepan Šejić is a Croatian comic book writer and artist, known for his work on the series Witchblade, Aphrodite IX, Sunstone, and The Darkness among others.
Witchblade is an American comic book series published by Top Cow Productions.
A comic book writer primarily known for her work on the Image Comics character Witchblade. She wrote the first 39 issues of the Witchblade series. In 2008, she wrote the Jenna Jameson -created series Shadow Hunter for Liquid Comics. She has also written Powerpuff Girls for DC Comics and Shadowplay for IDW Publishing.
↑ Jewell, Stephen, "A stand-up comic guy"; The New Zealand Herald, April 15, 2004
↑ Dawidziak, Mark, "TNT brings comics crime fighter to kick-smash life"; The Plain Dealer, August 27, 2000
↑ Bickley, Claire, Toronto Sun, February 15, 2000; TV Guide, July 20, 2008
↑ "TNT's Witchblade scores as highest-rated movie of the week", Business Wire, August 29, 2000; "Turner Network Television and Warner Bros. Television to produce Witchblade limited series", PR Newswire, October 12, 2000
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