Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Darkman Trilogy (1990, 1994, 1996)




Movie Info from WIki

Darkman is a 1990 film directed by Sam Raimi that was based on a short story he wrote that paid homage to Universal horror films of the 1930s. It stars Liam Neeson as Dr. Peyton Westlake, a scientist who is attacked and left for dead by a ruthless mobster, Robert Durant (played by Larry Drake), after his girlfriend, an attorney (played by Frances McDormand), runs afoul of a corrupt developer (played by Colin Friels). Westlake survives, but is left totally disfigured. While hospitalized, he is subjected to a radical treatment that, damaging nerves connected to his brain, neutralizes his ability to sense pain. Now half-crazed, Westlake escapes the hospital and decides to get revenge on the criminals who took his life away, but now as a masked vigilante, known as Darkman.

Unable to secure the rights to either The Shadow or Batman, Raimi decided to create his own superhero and struck a deal with Universal Studios to make his first Hollywood studio movie. He was subjected to a grueling screenwriting process and equally difficult post-production battle with the studio.

Darkman was generally well-received by critics and performed well at the box office, grossing almost $49 million worldwide, well above its $16 million budget. This financial success spawned two direct-to-video sequels, Darkman II: The Return of Durant and Darkman III: Die, Darkman, Die, as well as numerous comic books, video games and action figures. Ironically, Raimi eventually went on to direct the Spider-man movies, all of them big box office hits. This permitted Raimi to finally get the film rights to The Shadow.

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Darkman 1 (1990)

Darkman 2: Return of the durant (1994)

Darkman 3: Die darkman, die (1996)


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