Recent L.A. Times addition Steven Zeitchik has another casting scoop for Hero Complex:

Josh Brolin could be going from "W." to K.

With "No Country for Old Men," "Milk," "W.," and, of course, "The Goonies" on his resume, Brolin's filmography speaks for itself. Now he may be adding "Men in Black 3" to that estimable list.

The actor is being considered for a role that would have him donning the black suit and shades for the third installment of the sci-fi comedy franchise. His exact part is a matter of discussion, but in recent days there's been chatter in Hollywood development circles of a few possibilities: He could play a new single-monikered government agent, with Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K passing the baton to Brolin's character. Or he could play Agent K as a young man. Or something else entirely.

Whatever the part, Brolin could be playing against some star power: Will Smith is expected to return in the new "MIB" as Agent J.

It wouldn't mark the first time J ran missions with someone else. In the second film, his character briefly chased aliens and erased memories with other partners before Jones' Agent K came out of retirement. UPDATE: According to people familiar with the project, Brolin would play a young Agent K, with Smith's Agent J traveling back in time to meet him.

Sony is currently contemplating a production start for the picture in 2010 (though it has yet to be greenlit). The film, which is based on a script by "Tropic Thunder" writer Etan Cohen and which tentatively has Barry Sonnenfeld coming back to direct, could shoot at least partly in New York.

One issue that still needs to be worked out: scheduling. Brolin has lately given Nicolas Cage a run for his money as the hardest-working man in show business, starring in the comic-book western "Jonah Hex" and the sequel to Oliver Stone's "Wall Street." Both of those films have wrapped, but he's signed on for a few more meaty roles that could shoot in the first part of 2010, including the Coen brothers' remake of "True Grit" and the Mafia crime drama "Cartel."

-- Steven Zeitchik

RECENT AND RELATED:

Josh Brolin on the reloaded 'Jonah Hex': 'I'm feeling great about it now'

Akiva Goldsman on "Jonah Hex," "Lobo" and "Swmap Thing"

Comic-Con: Josh Brolin tries to explain 'Jonah Hex'

Del Toro: Swamp Thing is one of few Holy Grail projects left

Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets dead again...and darker  

Raimi's Spider-Man regrets: "I would have done everything differently"

A "Goonies" return? Cory Feldman says its possible

Credit: Photo of Josh Brolin by Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times

This is a significantly longer version of an article I wrote on Akiva Goldsman that ran Sunday in the Los Angeles Times Calendar section. Goldsman is one of the busiest Hollywood figures in comics and sci-fi projects with four adaptations coming based on DC characters and his new role as a key figure for the Fox series "Fringe." He's also a figure of controversy for fans who have not forgotten the sight of a Bat-suit with nipples. 

Akiva Goldsman arrived at the door of producer Brian Grazer in 1998 with one purpose. "I went there," the screenwriter says, "to beg."

Goldsman, who had enjoyed a steady ascension in Hollywood for years, was coming off a string of films that had badly battered his reputation. He had produced and written the forgettable dud "Lost in Space" -- and far worse, he had written the screenplay that would become the 1997 bomb "Batman & Robin," one of the most savagely disliked movies of the decade.

Given that history of burnt popcorn, Goldsman seemed like the least qualified writer in Hollywood to take on the task of adapting Sylvia Nasar's "A Beautiful Mind" for the screen, but that's the job he sought when he visited Grazer at the offices of Imagine Films. Shockingly, he got the gig, and the eventual film, about physicist John Nash and his slippery hold on reality, would win four Academy Awards, including best adapted screenplay for Goldsman, best director for Ron Howard and best picture.

"It was a profound experience for all of us involved," Goldsman recently recalled. "And I cannot overestimate what it meant for my career at that point."

The breakthrough put Goldsman in a lofty strata in Hollywood, and his screenwriting credits would include blockbusters such as "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons," "I Am Legend" and "I, Robot." And now, a decade after seeking a bit of largesse from Grazer, Goldsman is undertaking a new career path behind the camera.

He recently directed the season premiere of the Fox series "Fringe" and is now lining up his feature-film directorial debut. And despite having written what is perhaps the most reviled comic-book movie adaptation of all time, he's aggressively pursuing his childhood love of superheroes as the producer of five movies based on Marvel or DC comic books, including the Guy Ritchie adaptaion of "Lobo," the popular anti-hero show in the image on the right.

On closer inspection, comic-book fantasy and dark psychology are the touchstone themes of Goldsman's career. It's a tandem that might make a therapist smirk or reach for their notepad, and the same goes for the 47-year-old's memories of his childhood. The writer is the son of child psychologists Mira Rothenberg and Tev Goldsman, and the nature of his youth was a key reason that Grazer used the writer for "A Beautiful Mind."

"I grew up, essentially, in one of the very first group homes for what was then termed as 'emotionally disturbed children' -- these were days when, unimaginably, childhood schizophrenia and autism were lumped together in the same population," Goldsman said. "My parents founded this home, and I grew up there in this brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and my peers were, um, crazy. My definition of sanity is very labile; it's flexible and open."

Young Goldsman also lost himself in the tales of Batman, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Legion of Super-Heroes and all the other gaudy champions who inhabit the wildly intricate mythos of Marvel and DC. He sees his revisitation to his youthful concerns as a common experience in Hollywood. "I think we're all trying to make sense of what happened [in our childhoods] and that's what's startling -- in getting the chance to make stuff, sometimes, when everything is supended correctly, it feels like it makes sense." 

These days, his office at the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank is dotted with comic-book art, superhero statues, sci-fi imagery -- pop-culture signifiers that once would have been viewed as juvenilia but now are as proudly prevalent in Hollywood work spaces as Hitchcock posters and espresso machines.

On a recent afternoon, Goldsman gleefully showed off a personalized drawing that had been given to him years ago by the late Bob Kane, co-creator of Batman, and then debated the finer points of "Days of Future Past," a landmark two-issue X-Men comic-book story from 1981.

None of that, though, changes the fact that Goldsman might be booed off the stage if he were introduced at a comic-book convention. "Batman & Robin," the bloated 1997 movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger, certainly possesses an odious place in Hollywood history. Times critic Kenneth Turan said the Goldsman script had the "eerie feeling of having no beginning, no middle and no end." That was on the gentle end of the reaction; Goldsman and Schumacher actually received death threats, which suggests that there are a lot of people in the world who take their funny books seriously.

A few months ago, Kevin Feige, the president of production at Marvel Studios, said that "Batman & Robin" was more than a mere failure. "That may be the most important comic-book movie ever made," said Feige, whose studio is now at work on "Iron Man 2" and "Thor." "It was so bad that it demanded a new way of doing things. It created the opportunity to do 'X-Men' and 'Spider-Man,' adaptations that respected the source material and adaptations that were not campy."

Goldsman won't exactly apologize for the film, but he comes pretty close. He said he is proud of the effort put into it and weary of the conversations about its merit. He did learn a lesson from the film. "What got lost in 'Batman & Robin' is the emotions aren't real," Goldsman said, picking his words carefully. "The worst thing to do with a serious comic book is to make it a cartoon. I'm still answering for that movie with some people."

He said honoring the source material is the guiding concept for the projects he has in the pipeline now. Filming recently wrapped on his Warner Bros. project "Jonah Hex," which stars Josh Brolin as the bitter and scarred Old West antihero from DC Comics that dates to the 1970s.

"He's a character that has been described as having one foot on Earth and one foot beyond the grave, that he speaks to the dead . . . at the same time he is very much [like Sergio Leone's] 'The Man With No Name.' "

"Hex," now in post-production, is being  directed by Jimmy Hayward, who is following up his very different directorial debut, last year's "Horton Hears a Who." John Malkovich plays the villain, an evil preacher, while Megan Fox and Will Arnett also star.

After that is a commando film called "The Losers," also a DC adaptation, about a team of CIA operatives who are unwittingly sent on a suicide mission but survive and return to face their superiors.

The film stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan -- who got strong reviews for his black-ops and black-hearted role in "Watchmen" -- as well as Zoe Saldana and Jason Patric and is due in April of next year.

There's also "Lobo," a blue- and gray-skinned, super-powered alien who has a bad attitude and delights in mayhem; the character, for the uninitiated, looks like a buffed-out, biker version of Beetlejuice and acts like a bar-fighting big cousin of the extraterrestrial scamp from "Lilo and Stitch." There's also some common ground with the hero-behaving-badly tale of "Hancock," which Goldsman produced. 

"Lobo" is being directed by Guy Ritchie, which sounds like an odd fit -- he's rarely succeeded in stories that go past London and this one would take him off-planet -- but Goldsman says he's thrilled with the fit.

"There's something hyperbolic and authentic about a Guy Ritchie movie. His best movie are deeply, deeply  stylized yet they are all grounded; there's a grit of stylization, which sounds like an oxymoron but it makes perfect sense when you've seen his films."

Goldsman added: "We've never seen Guy's sensibility married to a project with such a large special effects budget. "

Goldsman said Ritchie will shoot a test scene in November -- "We've got the character design pretty much done," Goldsman said, "and the test will get us moving forward to the next step" -- and casting will be decided after that.

Then there's "Swamp Thing," which Goldsman said will be closer in tone to the character as presented in Alan Moore's eerie, metaphysical horror comics than the rubber-suit bog creature from the 1982 Wes Craven B-movie.

"We want a film with real Southern, dark horror overtones, a little bit like a classic Universal horror film," Goldsman said, knowing full well that his presence on the project will stir controversy -- it's a character that filmmaker Guillermo del Toro has called one of the "few remaining Holy Grails" in comics. There's also also talk of a Fantastic Four reboot, which has been met, no surprise, with sharply different reactions.

Vestiges of fan vitriol remain on the Internet for Goldsman, but in Hollywood his reputation is stellar. J.J. Abrams has brought him into the fold on "Fringe" as a key story collaborator, and Howard has now directed four films with Goldsman as screenwriter.

Howard said he has been "prodding" Goldsman to direct since watching the writer work with Russell Crowe and others on the set of "A Beautiful Mind."

"There have been many screenwriters who moved into directing with varying degrees of success, but it's not an automatic path," Howard said. "Screenwriters have, of course, a great sense of story and the nuances trying to being achieved, but they shield themselves from the practical matters of getting that story told on film. None of that is a problem for Akiva. He's comfortable having conversations with actors and collaborating."

Goldsman puts a premium on his affinity for teamwork and rattles off all the lessons he's learned from collaborators, such as Howard's open and supportive style, Peter Weir's devotion to authenticity, Will Smith's relentless optimism.

Goldsman got his start late in Hollywood. He had graduated from Wesleyan in 1983 and worked in the mental health field carrying the family tradition of sorts, but he found he was gripped more by flights of imagination than clinical challenges. He studied creative at New York University but novel writing defied him. He became an avid disciple of screenwriting guru John McKee’s approaches and had a breakthrough with his 1994 adaptation of John Grisham’s novel “The Client.”

His own literary beacons won't impress anyone with art-house sensibilities -- he talks with wonder about Stephen King's "ability to understand the emotional architecture of our imagination" -- but his populist tastes, skill with story and that old comic-book collection make him a man for the moment in Hollywood. He's now looking for a feature film to direct, and it may end up being a screen version of his favorite novel, "Winter's Tale," Mark Helprin's 1983 fantasy about an alternate-history New York, a thief and flying white horse.

It's yet another new chapter in the career of a man who has specialized in playing well with others in an asylum setting. "I'm very scared of many things, but drop me into world of people raging with schizophrenia and I feel perfectly at home," Goldsman deadpanned. "And I love Hollywood. Go figure."

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

ON THE SET: Hero Complex visits "Fringe" in Vancouver

J.J. Abrams, the Hero Complex interview

 'Trek,' 'Fringe,' 'Transformers' make summer hot for Orci & Kurtzman

Del Toro: Swamp Thing is one of few Holy Grail projects left

Jeffrey Dean Morgan gets dead again...and darker  

Raimi's Spider-Man regrets: "I would have done everything differently"

Why is Stan Lee signing Jack Kirby's artwork?

Should George Clooney star with Johnny Depp in "Lone Ranger"?

Harrison Ford: George Lucas in "think mode" on fifth "Indy"

Photos: Akiva Goldsman on the Warner lot (Brian Vander Brug/Los Angeles Times). Lobo from DC Comics. The cast of "Batman & Robin." Posters for the DC series "The Losers," the upcoming "Jonah Hex" film and "Fringe." Will Smith and Akiva Goldsman in 2007 (Toshifumi Kitamura/Getty images)

When I went to the Oscars a few weeks ago I got a chance to talk to "Milk" costar and supporting actor nominee Josh Brolin on the red carpet for a few moments. I really had only one question for him and it had nothing to do with this year's Academy Awards race: How are you feeling about "Jonah Hex"?

The movie star's face lit up.

"I feel great about it. I feel better than I thought I would be feeling, you know. We got a director in now, Jimmy Hayward, he's great, and [John] Malkovich is on board as the villain, and that's amazing. So things are going spectacular, really. I'm glad to see it."

He's glad, of course, because earlier in the project "Hex" seemed to be living up to its snake-bit name. The adaptation of the gritty six-shooter tale from DC Comics was moving forward with co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (known best for their tandem work on "Crank") and while their screenplay is still in play, Hayward (from the decidely non-gritty "Horton Hears a Who") was brought in late last year to take over.

Brolin has at times sounded like he was approaching the Old West project as some sort of slumming lark or counterintuitive career experiment. He told MTV in November that the script was awful but added, oddly: "Maybe the thing to do is to do the most awful movie I can find." Um, really?

HEATH LEDGER WINS A GOLDEN GLOBE: I went to the Golden Globes last night and contributed to the Los Angeles Times team coverage (we go all out for Hollywood trophy shows, too much in fact) and I got to say hello to Christopher Nolan as he crossed the banquet hall during one of the early commerical breaks. (The Globes are by far the best award show to cover; it's dinner seating, all the stars are liquored up and you can walk over and talk to anyone, which is why I got to interview Bruce Springsteen and Tom Hanks in the span of 10 minutes last night.) Not long after I spoke to Nolan, the late Heath Ledger won for his performance in "The Dark Knight." Here's what my colleague John Horn wrote about it, as well as the surprise victory for "Slumdog Millionaire" as best picture: "If 'Slumdog Millionaire' provided the most joyous moments at the 66th annual award show, Ledger's posthumous win for supporting actor offered its most poignant. Ledger died last January from an overdose of prescription medications, before 'The Dark Knight' was released and became the second-highest-grossing movie in Hollywood, trailing only 'Titanic.' 'The Dark Knight' was the actor's last completed film role. 'I for one will start to be able to look less at the gap in the future and the incredible place Heath made for himself with his talent and with his dedication,' Chris Nolan, the film's director and co-writer, said in accepting Ledger's award for his haunting performance as the Joker." [Los Angeles Times] To see all the awards won to date by Ledger's performance, check out this story in the Hollywood Reporter.

HORTON HEARS A "HEX": There was a story in the trades a few days ago about yet another change in the lurching effort to make a film adaptation of Jonah Hex, the grim, disfigured DC Comics western antihero. The movie has the great Josh Brolin locked in as the star but everything else seems to change every few months. The latest new face in the process is an animation specialist looking to saddle up with a live-action, six-shooter tale: "Jimmy Hayward, who directed the animated 'Horton Hears a Who!,' will make his live-action debut with 'Jonah Hex,' the Warner Bros. western based on the DC Comics character. Josh Brolin is attached to star in the film, which previously had Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor ('Crank') on board as directors. The duo, who also wrote the script, bowed out over creative differences in November. The studio, which hopes to put the movie into production in March or April, went on a fast-track search, putting together a short list that included such names as Andy Fickman and McG before narrowing it down to Hayward. The character of Hex, known for having the right side of his face disfigured and wearing a Confederate army uniform, was a rough-and-tumble gunslinger and part-time bounty hunter whose adventures always ended in blood. One incarnation of his comic book series saw the Western genre combined with supernatural elements, and it's this aspect that was featured in Neveldine and Taylor's script. The studio will likely keep the script, though it's expected that Hayward will put his stamp on it." [Hollywood Reporter]

MORE "WATCHMEN" TO WATCH: Here's a television promo for the March release...

IS TINTIN GAY?: Journalist and former politican Matthew Parris is quite the firebrand figure in England and his latest essay might ruffle some feathers of fans of the classic "Tintin" comics, which are soon to be adapted into a film: "Billions of blue blistering barnacles, isn't it staring us in the face? Sometimes a thing's so obvious it's hard to see where the debate could start. What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way? A callow, androgynous blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats, and whose only serious female friend is an opera diva... And you're telling me Tintin isn't gay? And Liberace was a red-blooded heterosexual...But really, what next? Lawrence of Arabia a ladies' man? Richard the Lionheart straight? And I suppose the Village People were a band of off-duty police officers, "YMCA" was a song about youth-hostelling, and Noddy and Big Ears are just good friends. But I'd better make the case because, astonishingly (and though when I googled “Tintin” and “gay” I got 526,000 references), there are still Tintin aficionados who remain in denial about this. Last year, as part of my BBC radio 'Great Lives' series, my guest, the international photojournalist Nick Danziger (who had nominated the life of Tintin), and my expert Tintinologist, Michael Farr (author of 'Tintin: The Complete Companion' and numerous other Tintin-related works), stunned me by not only denying hotly that their hero could have been gay, but even insisting that the thought had never occurred to them. Don't you find, though, that it's often the people closest to someone who never tumble to it?" [Times of London]

ON THIS DATE: The ABC series “Batman” premiered on this day in 1966 with the episode “Hi Diddle Riddle,” featuring Frank Gorshin as the Riddler and, in a unforgettable moment of farce, Adam West dancing the Batusi. If lore is to be believed, the show was inspired in part by the hooting crowd reactions to vintage Batman serials that were screened at the Playboy Club in Chicago (we all know what a comics and movie fan Hugh Hefner is) and its pop-art camp sensibility was a direct result of executive producer (and uncredited narrator) William Dozier's deep disdain for comic books. To celebrate this milestone in television history, let's punch people today and make our own zany sound effects. To see some video from the show, go to the end of this post...