Rogen’s Green Hornet Is Still On Track

The Green Hornet, for those of you not familiar with old radio dramas and serials, is newspaper publisher Brett Reid, who puts on a mask to fight crime as The Green Hornet (reportedly the “angriest” color of hornet) with his masked driver and manservant Kato.

The film adaptation that has been under development for over a year, with Seth Rogen writing the project and getting in shape to play Reid and Michel Gondry attached to direct.

The movie suffered what seemed to be a major loss last week when Stephen Chow, the writer/director/actor behind Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer dropped out of the role of Kato and left a large Asian-shaped hole in the cast.

This lead to rumors that the film had been shut down once again, mired in development hell. Strangely, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard the film was dead. Ever since Sundance of this year, there have been persistent rumors that Sony was shutting down this revival of a franchise whose original audience is too old to enjoy Seth Rogen movies, but on the Funny People junket, Rogen insists that The Green Hornet is getting made:

Mr. Beaks: I keep getting emails from some guy who’s trying to play the role of hollywood insider on GREEN HORNET. He keeps trying to feed me information, and he is consistently wrong.

Seth Rogen: Yeah? (Laughs)

Beaks: He’s always trying to tell me the movie is dead. And I’m like, “I’m pretty sure it’s not!”

Rogen: No, we’re building sets! There’s more people working on the film every day! They traditionally don’t spend millions and millions of dollars on movies that are dead. (Laughs)

If that’s not enough for you, HitFix got Rogen to qucikly hint, then retract, then hint again that The Green Hornet would have a presence at this week’s San Diego Comic Con:

“There may be a little something at Comic-Con,” Rogen acknowledges, haltingly.

Anything in particular? The movie isn’t scheduled for any sort of panel…

“I never know what I can say and what I can’t say,” he says, followed by a nervous laugh and no further answers.

After the press conference, HitFix approached Rogen and asked if, as we’ve heard, Comic-Con throngs may get their first glimpse at the film’s version of Black Beauty, Green Hornet’s famed Chrysler Imperial.

“It may be…” [Long pause.] “It may not be.”