This morning I did the press day for Paramount Vantages upcoming film Black Snake Moan. While the interviews with Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci will be posted in the next week or two, I got some info from John Singleton (one of the Producers of Black Snake Moan) on the long rumored Luke Cage film and wanted to do a quick update.

If you hadn’t heard, John Singleton has been attached to direct the Luke Cage film for awhile now and progress has been moving at a snails pace. With all the success of comic-book films you would figure getting a Luke Cage film off the ground would be easy. According to John, that just hasn’t been the case.

The vibe I got from listening to him is he’s definitely frustrated by the lack of progress. Below is what he said to our roundtable today.

Next directing projects?

John Singleton: I don't know if I'm doing Luke Cage. I want to do Luke Cage.

Frustrated with development?

John Singleton: Yeah. For me, the guy's a hero. I've been wanting to do the movie since I was a kid and I'm not going to do it unless it's right.

With all the comic book movies, why haven't they jumped on?

John Singleton: Well, because it's a black superhero and so studios still, some studios, don't understand that yeah, it is a black superhero but so what? He's a superhero. That hasn't been done yet. Like I said, unless it's right, I ain't gonna do it.

If diversity's big, why can't you do Luke Cage?

John Singleton: It's got to have a great script. We have a great script. We have a couple of great scripts. It's just a matter, like I said, some people have not got it yet. I'm not saying every studio on the board, some people haven't got it that multi-ethnic sells.

Is it at a studio and what's your vision?

John Singleton: It's a Marvel comics project. It's at Sony pictures. It's basically a guy that gets out of jail, basically breaks his way out of jail and he's basically a superman. He has to learn to be a hero for the sake of being a hero, not because somebody pays him to be a hero. What would an ex-con do if he had powers? He'd go back to the neighborhood and be like, 'Okay, yeah, I'll help you but you've got to pay me. If you're not paying me, I'm going to make sure you don't…' He's going to be kind of a thug but then he's got to realize that you do things for the right thing, not just for profit.