Here's a brief history of Doc Savage on

Here's a brief history of Doc Savage on film.https://www.facebook.com/groups/DocSavageMovie/permalink/1319790401382057/

Everyone knows the four actors who have actually been cast as Doc Savage: Chuck Connors, Ron Ely, Arnold Schwarznegger and Dwayne Johnson. Of those, only Ron Ely actually played the role.

There have been as many attempts to make a Doc Savage movie or TV series that never even got to the casting stage.

Goodson-Todman, best known for TV games shows but also involved in Western dramas like "The Rebel" (1959–1961) starring Nick Adams as Johnny Yuma and "Branded" (1965-1966) starring Chuck Connors as Jason McCord, acquired to the rights to Doc Savage in 1966 and planned on making film adaptations of "The Thousand-Headed Man" and "The Phantom City" but it turned out that film rights had been sold to author Lester Dent on 22 Jun 1933. Goodson-Todman took the cast that they'd assembled for Doc Savage and made a Western called "Ride Beyond Vengeance" (1966).

Dent had tried to strike deals with Columbia and Republic for Doc Savage serials but those deals fell through because he insisted that had to write the screenplays himself and neither studio was willing to cede such control to an outsider. The Columbia serial "Jack Armstrong" (1947) is believed to be a reworking of a proposed Doc Savage serial script.

Several producers took interest in producing Doc Savage TV shows only to run aground on the fact that the rights belonged to Dent's widow, who'd be strong-armed by Condé Nast in 1966 and subsequently refused to deal with anybody thereafter.

Attempts were made to secure the TV rights by "Leave It to Beaver" producer George Gobel, "Dragnet" producer Jack Webb, "The Fugitive" producer Quinn Martin and ITC executive Sir Lew Grade, but it wasn't until George Pal brokered a settlement between Condé Nast and Norma Dent that the film and TV rights finally became available on Tuesday, 20 Jul 1971.

George Pal then produced "Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze" (Jun 1975) from a script by Joe Morhaim. There are two versions of the teased sequel "The Arch Enemy of Evil", a film synopsis or "treatment" by Philip José Farmer based on "Murder Mirage" and a full script by Joe Morhaim based on "Death in Silver". The Farmer treatment has since been published in the book "Pearls from Peoria" (2006, Subterranean Press) as "Doc Savage & The Cult of the Blue God".

Pal also commissioned a script for a one-hour pilot for a half-hour Doc Savage TV series from Alvin Sapinsley based on "The Secret in the Sky". All of these script are been published at various times but none of these publications were authorized.

In 1978, apparently in response to the success of "The New Adventures of Wonder Woman", Hollywood screenwriter Barry Oringer and former "Mission: Impossible" and current "The Six Million Dollar Man" writer Allen Balter wrote a script called "The Mind Assassins" for a 90-minute TV movie that updated Doc Savage to the Disco era. Even the screenwriter Barry Oringer doubted that it would have become an ongoing series.

Around the same time, "Jonny Quest" creator Doug Wildey and his apprentice Dave Stevens, having fallen out with Hanna-Barbara over "Godzilla" and other projects, pitched a Doc Savage animated series to NBC, which declined because it had just signed a deal for "The New Adventures of Flash Gordon" with Filmation. Two samples from that presentation are now available as posters.

Frank Brunner pitched a Doc Savage series for DreamWorks SKG based on the premise "If you like Indiana Jones, you'll LOVE Doc Savage!" SKG decline because it already had Indiana Jones and so no reason to cheapen that brand and was already producing "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles" (1999-2000). The Brunner was subsequently auctioned off with the erroneous description "Original art for the upcoming DOC SAVAGE ANIMATED SERIES being produced by DREAMWORKS SKG".

Following the success of "The Mummy" (1999) with Brendan Fraser, Castle Rock Entertainment announced plans to produce a new Doc Savage movie in cooperation with Warner Bros. and Universal Studios, projected for release in 2001 as one of the first films of the Twenty-First Century. Film-makers Frank Darabont of "The Shawshank Redemption" (23 Sep 1994) and Charles "Chuck" Russell of "The Mask" (29 Jul 1994) would supervise the production, based on script by Brett Z. Hill of "The Green Mile" (10 Dec 1999) and Shawshank production assistant David Leslie Johnson. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had just wrapped "End of Days" (24 Nov 1999), signed on to play Doc immediately following completion of "The 6th Day" (17 Nov 2000).

The Hill-Johnson script is the only thing from this "production" that was ever produced.

On Thursday, 18 Dec 2008, the entertainment website IGN (formerly Imagine Games Network) announced that Batman fan turned pro Michael Uslan, the first instructor to teach an accredited course on comic book folklore at any university and author of The Pow! Zap! Wham! Comic Book Trivia Quiz: 1001 Questions & Answers (1977, Morrow, ISBN 978-0-68803-231-9), was lined up to produce a new Doc Savage movie.

On Monday, 26 Oct 2009, film critic Harry Jay Knowles of Ain't It Cool News (AICN) reported that hotshot screenwriter and director Shane Black, previously best known for "Lethal Weapon" (06 Mar 1987) and "Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang" (21 Oct 2005), would be scripting a Doc Savage movie for hotshot action film producers Alex Kutzman and Roberto Gaston Orci, whose most recent hit had been J. J. Abram’s reboot of "Star Trek" (08 May2009).

Within hours, that initial report was corrected, with the Doc Savage project now credited to Neal H. Moritz and Ori Marmur of Sony Pictures. It was first in a series of confusing and contradictory announcements about a film project that has still not yet gone into actual production.

Nothing appeared to come of this initial announcement over the next four years. Despite any evidence of further progress on the Doc Savage script, Shane Black directed a screenplay that he co-wrote with British screenwriter, director and producer Drew Pearce and adapting comic book story arc from Iron Man, Vol, IV, No. 1–6: “Extremis” (Jan 2005–Apr 2006) by Warren Girard Ellis (16 Feb 1968– ) to produce the summer blockbuster "Iron Man 3" (25 Apr 2013).

On Tuesday, 07 May 2013, Sony finally made its first official announcement of a Doc Savage film project: "Sony Pictures Entertainment has closed its deal with Shane Black to co-write and direct Doc Savage, and Black is eyeing it as his next film, it was announced today by Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, and Hannah Minghella, president of Production for the studio. Black co-wrote the screenplay with Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, based on the hero of pulp novels, films, and comic books. Neal H. Moritz is producing the project with Ori Marmur through his Original Film banner. Michael Uslan will also serve as a producer on the film."

Almost immediately, Sony began pitching Doc Savage to its financial partners and clients as a potential “tent pole” for a new film franchise on par with (wit for it) Indiana Jones. Shane Black himself didn’t begin talking about the project again until Friday, 28 June 2013.

On Tuesday, 17 Sep 2013, Shane Black gave a two-and-a-half minute online video interview with IGN discussing both the character and the difficulty of finding a suitable actor to play the role. Chris Hemsworth topped the list of potential candidates.

Credited to Shane Black, Charles “Chuck” Mondry and Anthony Bagarozzi, a new Doc Savage script dated Tuesday, 28 Mar 2014 began making the rounds at Sony. On Monday, 07 Apr 2014, an annotated version of this script, nearly twice the size of the script initially submitted to Sony executive Amy Beth Pascal at the end of March, was sent to David Bugliari of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), the agent for thirty-six-year-old actor Bradley Charles Cooper for his consideration.
For what it may be worth, Bradley Cooper or his agent declined the offer

On Friday, 21 Nov 2014, Sony Pictures was hacked by an entity calling itself “Guardians of Peace” (GOP), which claimed to have obtained all of Sony’s internal data “including your secrets and top secrets” and threatening to release certain specified data stores to the world unless its then-unspecified demands were met by 11:00 PM (GMT) on Monday, 24 Nov 2014. On Monday, 01 Dec 2014. GOP made good on its threat, leaking the aformentioned emails.

On Wednesday, 15 Apri 2015, WikiLeaks posted the hacked Sony emails. The information was already a year old, during which time the project appears to have been sidelined if not shelved altogether. In any case, the most recent email in the “data dump” was dated Tuesday, 23 September 2104 and the most recent relating to the actual Doc Savage script was dated Saturday, 24 May 2014.

Attached to some of these emails were two different Doc Savage scripts as Adobe PDF files, a 374KB file named “Doc Savage (03-28-14).pdf” and a 762KB file named “DOC SAVAGE_Bradley Cooper.pdf”. Unfortunately, while the WikiLeaks posted the text of the emails, none of the attachments to those emails were included.

On Tuesday, 30 May 2016, Dwayne Johnson was officially cast to Doc Savage in the film "production" initially announced by AICN nealry 8 years earlier.