The first of the second tier Marvel Comic Character movies has taken one step closer to reality when Marvel today hired the services of Rich Wilkes to draft the first script for IRON FIST! The long running character Daniel Rand whose alias Iron fist who combines the power of martial arts with supernatural abilities with a Batman-esque story of revenge.
In the past their has been many attempts to bring Ironfist to the big screen and Wilkes the creator of the xXx movie the latest writer to give the comic a go of creating a once design for Ray Parks movie. The character was born in 1974 in the midst of American fascination for martial arts and 36 years on the idea to bring the character to our cinemas seems to still alive and well. This is not the RZA The Man With the Iron Fists movie he’s currently writing and probably directing but another step to bring more of the Marvel World to a cinema screen or television near you.
Iron Fist was first introduced to the comicbook world back in 1974 in issue 15 of Marvel Premiere before getting his own short lived series but he did get eventually have a long running series with another character Powerman Luke Cage which ran into the mid 1980’s. For the next 20 years Ironfist spent second fiddle to cameo appearances in the issues for the studio’s a-listers until 2006 when he eventually got his own title again The Immortal Ironfist created by Ed Brubarker and there’s talk that this could be the title for the movie or take elements from the characters history.
This definitely looks like the first steps by Marvel broaden the Marvel brand give some of the second tier characters like Ironfist, Dr Strange, Dazzler a chance at getting adapted for the big or even small screen on low to mid budgets using new directors/producers possibly with new upcoming cast testing the waters to see the reaction possibly if good a major version could follow. Its all good marketing instead of the old attiude of making then asking questions later which is a attiude thats costing studio’s millions of income, so its a shrewd move!.
Here’s Ironfist’s bio from Marvel.com
Daniel Rand was the son of businessman Wendell Rand, who had once lived in the fabled city of K’un-Lun, which exists in an other dimensional realm…Wendell sought to return to K’un-Lun, which ordinarily was only accessible from Earth through an interdimensional nexus that opened once every ten years. When Daniel was nine, his father traveled to Tibet along with Heather and his business partner Harold Meachum in search of the nexus to K’un-Lun. Toppling off a treacherous mountain passage, Daniel dragged his mother and father over the ice shelf with him…Soon thereafter, denizens of K’un-Lun found the boy and took him to their city. There Daniel was brought before Yu-Ti, who had secretly plotted the murder of both Wendell and Heather. Yu-Ti apprenticed Daniel to the martial arts master Lei Kung the Thunderer. Rand’s training under Lei Kung was rigorous. At age sixteen Rand earned the Crown of Fu-Hsi, king of the vipers, vanquished four foes in the ritualistic Challenge of the Many, and defeated Shu-Hu, a mechanical being whose name means “Lightning.” Rand diligently conditioned his hands by thrusting them into tubs of hot sand, then gravel, and finally rock. At age nineteen Rand was given the opportunity to gain the power of the Iron Fist. He was sent to battle the enormous fire-breathing serpent called Shou-Lao the Undying which lived in a cave outside the city and which ferociously guarded a brazier containing its heart, which had mystically been removed from its body. In their battle Rand grabbed the serpent’s body, which bore a scar which imprinted itself upon Rand’s chest. Killing the serpent, Rand plunged his hands into the now unguarded brazier containing Shou-Lao’s molten heart when he was through his hands shone with a quasi-mystical force and he earned the title “Iron Fist,” for he could now summon superhuman energy to reinforce the power of blows struck by his hands.
source/Film
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