Mandrake the Magician movie adaptation is moving ahead, and to ensure the story is as good as it can be, Warner Bros. has hired Tom Wheeler to rework the script.
A few months ago, Major Spoilers brought you the story that Mandrake the Magician was getting the movie treatment, and now Warner Bros. wants to ensure the movie is done right (i.e. in the style of Sherlock Holmes), and has brought in Puss in Boots scribe, Tom Wheeler to give the script a good reworking.
Mandrake is a magician whose work is based on an unusually fast hypnotic technique. As noted in captions, when Mandrake “gestures hypnotically”, his subjects see illusions, and Mandrake has used this technique against a variety of villains including gangsters, mad scientists, extraterrestrials, and characters from other dimensions.
Mandrake and the Phantom Magician in Mel Graff’s The Adventures of Patsy are regarded by comics historians as the first superheroes of comics. Comics historian Don Markstein writes, “Depending on how you define the term, Patsy’s recurring rescuer, The Phantom Magician, may have been the first superhero in comics… Some people say Mandrake the Magician, who started in 1934, was comics’ first superhero.
If this is set in the right time period (1930s), AND Wheeler can make hypnotism work, then I expect a whole range of movies with golden age characters hitting the screen, including a new take on The Shadow.
