For the life of me, I cannot wrap my head around "The Phantom". He's a stupendous concept, been around longer than Superman, is still published in comic books today and yet on film and television he's almost a non-entity. The character has never gone away but somehow never reached his true potential.
Oh and he's fond of purple, so I'm on board with the costume. Even the trunks.
He started in comic strips, created by Lee Falk in 1936. He showed up on film in a 1943 serial and then pretty much disappeared back into the relative obscurity of comic strip print. In the 80's he showed up as part of "The Defenders of the Earth" along with Mandrake the Magician, Flash Gordon and Lothar and their respective offspring. For the time it was a decent cartoon but never made much of a splash.
In the 90s, first he appeared in "Phantom 2040" and then in a live action film with Billy Zane. Both are competently done but neither gets a lot of love.
The Phantom 2040 animated series starred Scott Valentine as the Phantom (that's Mallory's rock-stupid boyfriend from Family Ties if you're wondering) with a supporting cast that included Margot Kidder as the heavy, Ron Pearlman as her flunky and Mark Hamill as the cyborg news guy. It's two solidly done seasons that has about zero fans these days despite being a pretty solid show. It gets a lot of love in Australia, where the popularity of The Phantom is still very strong but that's about it. I had to buy my dvd of season 1 from Oz, in fact and season 2 has yet to be released.
Billy Zane really looked every bit the hero in the 1996 film and took his role so seriously that they shot his out of costume stuff first so he could SHAVE HIS HEAD to make the skull cap fit all the better when they shot the costume stuff. That's a dedicated actor!
There was a SyFy miniseries attempt to update the character, but it was so poorly done that the series it was a pilot for never materialized.
So, why keep trying?
The Phantom is a unique creation that blends fantasy, superhero and sci-fi elements with a very cool backstory that allows the character to show up at virtually any point in history or even the future without causing a problem with character canon. The original Phantom was the sole survivor of a pirate caused shipwreck off the African coast in the 1500s, who vowed to devote his life and the lives of his sons to the elimination of piracy in all its forms in return for the gift of his survival. The most well known incarnation of the Phantom bases out of Africa in the 20th Century but he can pretty much show up anywhere, anywhen and still be perfectly "in-canon" since the mantle is handed down from father to son in perpetuity.
The Phantom is unique as well in his longstanding commitment to the environment. From the get go, The Phantom is as hard on those pillaging the natural world as he is on evil doers. While that's pretty common in the superheroes of today, it was pretty revolutionary at the time the Phantom was created.
Oh and he wears a skull shaped ring, leaving skull shaped imprints in the villains he punches. How awesome is that?
Add to all of that the real and ever present need of the current incarnation of The Phantom to marry and produce an heir to carry on the legacy, you have a character who just screams cinematic gold, particularly in the current comic book friendly Hollywood. Great costume, cool gimmicks, animal friends like the dog Devil, romance, history and he's so environmentally friendly he even recycles his identity! I could write a hit film with one hand.
The two big drawbacks of the character are easily addressed. First he really falls smack into the "Great White Saviour of Africa" trope, in a lot of ways between Tarzan and "Great White Hunter" territory. While that's a part of the character's DNA, it would be easy to rework the character to put that behind him. Either use a modern day incarnation and simply place all that stuff squarely in a less than perfect past or do a period piece and have the character avoid the stereotype. I could even see it as something that gets hung on a historic version of the character that he privately disavows.
Second, the whole "father to son" thing is outdated. In The Defenders of the Earth cartoon, The Phantom has a daughter, so there's already precedence to either cast a woman Phantom or a female heir to the throne (seriously, the Phantom uses a skull motif and has a Skull Throne in his lair) for a sequel down the road.
A great Phantom movie is due. How we haven't already had one is a complete mystery.
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