With Iron Man 3 currently going stratospheric at the Box Office all over the world – current tally $700 million and rising fast – it’s hardly surprising that the film’s director/co-screenwriter Shane Black is already being linked to another larger-than-life superhero character, albeit one of a slightly greater vintage than Tony Stark. It seems that Sony have signed Black to work on a new feature film version of the legendary 1920s and 1930s pulp hero Doc Savage – Man of Bronze. Created by Henry Ralston and John Nanovic (although the bulk of his adventures were written by Lester Dent) Doc Savage – along with his ‘companions’ Monk, Ham, Renny, Long Tom and Johnny – first appeared in print in 1933. Savage, an adventurer and scientist who has trained his mind and body to almost superhuman levels battles evil and tyranny from his headquarters in a New York skyscraper. Despite his magazine adventures coming to an end in 1949, Doc Savage has remained a popular figure in American culture, appearing in comics, on the radio and, perhaps most infamously, an ill-advised 1975 feature film directed by George Pal and starring TV Tarzan Ron Ely. In more recent years the character has been kept alive in comic mini-series published by Marvel, DC, Millennium Publications and Dark Horse.

Black has apparently already co-written a screenplay for Doc Savage; if he can bring the same wit and invention to the project as he displayed in Iron Man 3, this could be one to watch out for in a couple of years time…

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