Mandrake Gestures for the Big Screen based on the Falk comic strip magician April 25th 2007 09:02am | Posted by: Michael Stevens, HNR Senior Editor Omega Entertainment, a Switzerland-based independent led by founder Markus Barmettler, plans to produce/release up to ten films a year in the $10-$60 million range, with former Lakeshore topper Peter Rogers as president. The company has entered into a two-year, first-look financing deal with Howard and Karen Baldwin's Baldwin Entertainment Group, readying a slate of films that will include director Chuck Russell’s action-adventure Mandrake, based on the comic strip character, 'Mandrake the Magician'. Created in 1934 by Lee Falk (also creator of 'The Phantom'), 'Mandrake' was an illusionist whose work was based on an impossibly fast hypnotic technique. When he "...gestured hypnotically..." he could induce anyone to hallucinate. Leon Mandrake, a noted stage magician of the time was said to have been an influence for the character. In 1939, Columbia produced a 12-part Mandrake the Magician movie serial, based on the King Features strip, starring Warren Hull as Mandrake and Al Kikume as 'Lothar'. NBC produced a TV pilot in 1954, starring stage magician Coe Norton as Mandrake and Woody "Spartacus" Strode as Lothar. Actor Anthony Herrera starred in the 1979 TV movie Mandrake with Ji-Tu Cumbuka as Lothar and an appearnace by stage magician Harry Blackstone Jr. The musical Mandrake the Magician and the Enchantress was produced in the 1970s for the Lenox Arts Festival in Massachusetts with music by George Quincy, book by Lee Falk and Thayer Burch, and lyrics by Thayer Burch. In the animated series Defenders of the Earth, Mandrake teams up with fellow King Features characters 'Flash Gordon' and The Phantom. Baldwin Entertainment is noted for the films Ray and Swimming Upstream. Source: SneakPeek.Ca In: Features |Visit the HNR Forums

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