Adaptations are wonderful, for so many reasons. It’s easy to dismiss the work of an adapting writer or director as “easy,” but it’s actually quite tough – just for fun, try adapting your favorite book into a screenplay.

I’M WAITING!

See? It’s hard to remember every little detail. It’s hard to interpret the original meaning, the feel, the indescribable quality of the words and mental images that it is now your task to translate. You’re constantly flipping back and forth, trying to make things right.

I admire those who can spin a good adaptation. We’ve got some interesting ones coming our way, too, which is always a fun time. It’s too soon to say if they’ll be any good, but that doesn’t stop the blogosphere from predicting.

(There’s that word again. Blogosphere. BRB, suicide.)

One of DC Comic’s lesser-known children is Jonah Hex, a “Western comic book anti-hero,” according to Wikipedia. He’s a former Confederate soldier with a grudge and a badly scarred face – if by “badly scarred” you mean “he only has one little strip of skin left where his cheek should be.” If you ask me, we need an entirely new term for that.

Anyway, surprisingly enough, there’s a Jonah Hex movie in the works. A supposed concept photo with Thomas Jane in the starring role made the rounds a few days ago, but apparently it’s not attached to the project – just something Jane did in his spare time.

So, what else? Martin Scorcese is adapting the Dennis Lehane novel Shutter Island, and /Film has nabbed a photo of Leo DiCaprio in the film. It “tells the story of a U.S. Marshal (DiCaprio) who travels to Shutter Island, a small island in Massachusetts’ Outer Harbor, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to find an escaped murderous patient in the Summer of 1954.” Cool.

One more before you go: that Max Payne adaptation. Here are some set photos. Yawn. Nobody cares about this anymore, maybe because we’ve all given up on Marky Mark after The Happening, or maybe because Max Payne was much cooler in the ’90s.

That’s it for upcoming adaptations – stay tuned for further developments.

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