Dec 3, 2010

Campbell's Burn Notice Movie Is Go!This is TV-movie news, so don't get your hopes up about seeing it in the cinema. It's also slightly old news, sinc

This is TV-movie news, so don't get your hopes up about seeing it in the cinema. It's also slightly old news, since it was mentioned at Comic Con, but some further details and an official greenlight have now been forthcoming on the Burn Notice prequel film, centred around Bruce Campbell's ex-Navy SEAL Sam Axe.

The series itself is about Jeffrey Donovan's Michael Westen, a forcibly-retired secret agent scraping by in Miami as a private investigator. Campbell, for four years now, has been his sidekick: a Hawaiian-shirt-wearing, mojito-abusing lothario with a thing for older women, who's nevertheless handy for a spot of gunplay, martial arts, wiretapping, burglary, or whatever else this week's plot may require.

The as-yet-untitled movie, to be directed by Donovan, will fill in Axe's back-story, which we've heard about in the series but not yet seen. Specifically, it's about his last mission, taking down Colombian rebels. Jeff Wachtel, president of the USA channel's original programming, explained that, in San Diego this year "We saw Bruce Campbell as the Bruce Springsteen of Comic Con. We saw the spectacular explosive fan reaction and realized that, in Bruce, we had not only a great actor but also a pop culture icon."

Foolish not to capitalise on that, of course. The bad news though, is that the Burn Notice movie will shoot during the hiatus between seasons four and five, putting it right in the way of Campbell having any time for his mooted My Name is Bruce sequel Bruce Vs. Frankenstein. And don't even talk to us about Bubba Nosferatu. This James Bond / Number Six stuff is all well and good, but we really want to see Bruce as Elvis again...