Is now the per­fect time for a Sin City reboot?

When Frank Miller’s ​‘Sin City’ ini­tial­ly made the tran­si­tion from well-thumbed pages to the sil­ver screen, it did so in an era that pre­dat­ed the end­less stream of com­ic book adap­ta­tions arriv­ing on the stu­dio assem­bly line. Ren­dered in a mono­chrome, neo-noir style that fused sur­re­al­ism with per­vad­ing soci­etal ills such as cor­rup­tion and the clan­des­tine under­world, Robert Rodriguez’s 2005 adap­ta­tion was laud­ed for not only its faith­ful recre­ation of the source material’s mul­ti-lay­ered world but for cre­at­ing a riv­et­ing cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence that brought Miller’s shad­owy den of iniq­ui­ty to new lev­els of eminence.

Although the 2014 sequel, A Dame to Kill For, fell some way short of its predecessor’s high stan­dards, the allure of its char­ac­ters and unique visu­al traits hadn’t entire­ly fad­ed. This was made evi­dent by the bid­ding fren­zy that was sparked when Miller began pitch­ing a pro­posed reboot to var­i­ous tele­vi­sion net­works in 2017. Now, fol­low­ing the sale of The Wein­stein Com­pa­ny to Lantern Cap­i­tal, the rights to the prop­er­ty have revert­ed back to its orig­i­nal cre­ator, and it looks increas­ing­ly like­ly that we’re in for a return to the blood-stained streets of Basin City.

Before giv­ing a new Sin City project the green light any prospec­tive stu­dio would need to con­sid­er how it would fit into today’s enter­tain­ment sphere. Epit­o­mised by The Academy’s con­tro­ver­sial deci­sion to intro­duce an ​‘Out­stand­ing Pop­u­lar Film’ cat­e­go­ry at next year’s awards cer­e­mo­ny, the pow­er of the Hol­ly­wood block­buster – and in par­tic­u­lar com­ic book movies – is at all all-time high. Miller’s mis­an­throp­ic anti-heroes may be a far cry from the palat­able do-good­ers that pop­u­late the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse, but the record-break­ing response to the R‑rated Dead­pool films cou­pled with the pop­u­lar­i­ty of Netflix’s Dare­dev­il and The Pun­ish­er series sug­gests that the time could be right for a Sin City reboot.

It’s also worth not­ing that Miller’s stock is again on the rise fol­low­ing a peri­od of inac­tiv­i­ty, which the famed com­ic book artist has since attrib­uted to a com­bi­na­tion of alco­hol and not ​“think­ing clear­ly”. What­ev­er demons he may have been bat­tling, the con­straints on his cre­ative out­put appear to have been all but erad­i­cat­ed. In addi­tion to a five-project deal with DC, Miller is cur­rent­ly pen­ning a Net­flix series based on Arthuri­an leg­end, which is being tout­ed as the first of its kind due to the fact that the same cre­ative team are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly writ­ing a tie-in book.

And while Rodriguez’s 2005 film and its sequel mined many of the most revered tales from Miller’s orig­i­nal series (‘The Hard Good­bye’, ​‘That Yel­low Bas­tard’, ​‘The Big Fat Kill’ and ​‘A Dame to Kill For’), there remains a wealth of unused mate­r­i­al, from Marv’s exis­ten­tial jour­ney through the snow in ​‘Silent Night’ to Dwight and Miho’s inves­ti­ga­tion of a mob hit in ​‘Fam­i­ly Val­ues’ to the hal­lu­cino­genic revenge mis­sion of the pre­vi­ous­ly unseen Wal­lace in ​‘Hell and Back’.

Cast­ing is a trick­i­er mat­ter, as it’s hard to imag­ine any­one but Mick­ey Rourke play­ing the gruff, sadis­tic Marv. The same could be said of Rosario Dawson’s Old Town lynch­pin Gail, Jes­si­ca Alba’s Nan­cy Callaghan and Pow­ers Boothe’s malev­o­lent Sen­a­tor Roark, although the role of Dwight McCarthy (pre­vi­ous­ly filled by Clive Owen and Josh Brolin respec­tive­ly) could be ratio­nalised through the character’s pen­chant for plas­tic surgery. The suc­cess of any new entry in the series will sure­ly hinge on Miller’s abil­i­ty to craft new char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines that allow for age-appro­pri­ate actors to be enlist­ed in the place of their A‑list coun­ter­parts. Get this right and we may well see Sin City resumed from its shal­low, bul­let-strewn grave.