Frank Miller’s The Spirit – in which one legendary comic book creator adapts another, in this case the late Will Eisner’s pulpy comic strip - has been assembling its cast for a while now.
And what a cast it is, with Samuel L. Jackson as the bad guy, The Octopus, Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson as femme fatales Sand Saref and Silken Floss, and recently the under-rated Gabriel Macht as Denny Colt/The Spirit, a rookie cop in the fictitious Central City who fakes his own death and then comes back as a masked crimefighter.
But now it would appear that Miller’s jigsaw is complete and all ready to start filming in Albuquerque in October, using much the same greenscreen-heavy method that Miller and Robert Rodriguez employed on Sin City.
For today he cast Sarah Paulson – recently seen in the ill-fated Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip and so memorable in Down With Love - as Dr. Ellen Dolan, the police commissioner’s daughter and the true love of the Spirit’s life, and also filled a number of supporting roles.
They include Louis Lombardi as Phobos, a henchman of The Octopus, Dan Lauria as Commissioner Dolan, and Stana Katic as another rookie cop – but one that, presumably, doesn’t come back from the ‘dead’ as a crimefighter.
The movie, which marks Miller’s first time in the director’s chair on his lonesome, will be released by Lionsgate on January 16, 2009. We wish Frank well.