There have been a lot of misguided comic adaptations over the years, studios snatching up titles with a semblance of fan base and turning them into movies no one was necessarily dying to see. Some worked (Road to Perdition, American Splendor), most didn’t (Barb Wire, Steel, Tank Girl, Josie and the Pussycats and on and on and on…). "Precedent be damned!" says Warner Brothers, as they’re betting on your interest in the revival of a long dead, maybe-sort of beloved DC property called Metal Men.
Ironically, Metal Men broke into the comic scene in 1962 as a throw-away story in DC’s Showcase anthology. Powered by autonomous intelligence makers called "responseometers", the group battled Chemo– a walking plastic bottle filled with nasty chemicals, not the cancer treatment, Missile Men and the Gas Gang. Apparently, readers liked Iron, Gold, Mercury, Platinum (the token girl), Lead and Tin robots enough, the group became a title. Shapeshifting their way to victory, Metal Men took on the attributes of their host metal (talk about rock-hard enhancements), but kind of petered out in 1978 when story changes were made and things like "gritty" and "these Metal Men suck" became more mainstream.
Warner Brothers has released writer/producer/thesp Eric Champnella from "Time Out" for his work on Mr. 3000 and set him up to write the big screen apaptation. Interestingly, the project is being produced Lauren Shuler Donner, who brought X-Men (success!) and Constantine (not so much!) to theaters everywhere. With Marvel’s mining of every title regardless of whether it’s good or not and DC’s on/off/holding pattern approach to getting their main titles made (Superman and Batman aside), twelfth-tier stuff like Metal Men is bubbling up.
Lucky we.