“Meet the new action heroes: Lincoln, Da Vinci, Dickens and Queen Victoria”

We’ve been down this road on GITS before — “Brands are the new stars”, “Now it’s Erector Set 3D: The Movie (No Kidding!) — and have been introduced to a new concept based on old stuff: Pre-branded brands. That is, anything old that Hwood could turn into a movie, thinking that since brands are already ‘pre-branded’ in the minds of consumers, it will be easier to market that movie.

Well, it ain’t just Monopoly, Candyland, and Viewmaster 3D anymore, kids. Hwood is moving into what I guess we can call re-branded brands: Take an historical figure, either real or fictional, and re-brand them as an action hero. We saw this with the latest iteration of Sherlock Holmes:

Now check out this per the always excellent LA Times movie blog “Hero Complex”:

Forget Indiana Jones. If you’re making a period-piece adventure these days, you might want to consider putting the whip, wooden stake or pistol in the hand of a long-gone world leader or esteemed author.It may sound a bit strange, but that’s the message coming back from pop culture at the moment. Consider the fact that, at bookstores right now, Abe Lincoln and Queen Victoria are each taking on dark supernatural threats and that Hollywood has plans to turn Charles Dickens, H.P. Lovecraft and Leonardo da Vinci into on-screen action heroes.

The new novel “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” by Seth Grahame-Smith (who also brought the world “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”) is getting enthusiastic reviews, as is “Queen Victoria: Demon Hunter,” which Los Angeles Times book reviewer Nick Owchar called “wildly entertaining.”

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Just announced, meanwhile, is “Leonardo da Vinci and the Soldiers of Forever,” a Warner Bros. and Prime Universe project that would pit Italian artist and thinker Leonardo against “biblical demons in a story involving secret codes, lost civilizations, hidden fortresses and fallen angels,” as it was summed up at the Heat Vision blog, which first reported the venture. (Who might star in it? That was the playful question asked by Patrick Goldstein of the Big Picture, who is not impressed with idea of the “Mona Lisa” painter as action hero.)

It’s a bit like the practice of genre-bending: Take a character we would normally associate with a dramatic bio-pic and make them the Protagonist of an action movie.

So who else might we turn to as potential action movie vehicles?

Albert Einstein: “The genius of physics… gets physical!”

Vincent Van Gogh: “First he cut off his ear. Now he cuts out your heart!”

St. Francis of Assisi: “Nature lover? Hell no! He’s a force of nature!”

What other ‘new’ action heroes from the past can we re-brand?

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