Darkman

Darkman is the title of a 1990 film directed by Sam Raimi, starring Liam Neeson as scientist Peyton Westlake. Scarred and badly burnt after criminals attack and demolish his laboratory, doctors are forced to destroy Westlake's nerve endings, thus giving him incredible strength and making him oblivious to pain. He becomes Darkman, a superhero of sorts who seeks revenge upon corrupt developer Louis Strack, Jr. (played by Colin Friels) and mobster Robert G. Durant (played by Larry Drake), the men responsible for destroying his life. To hide his scarring and blend into crowds, Westlake wears synthetic skin that dissolves in light after a certain amount of time, which he also uses to disguise himself as other people.

Darkman merchandising

Darkman has been the subject of two Marvel Comics series, numerous novels, as well as computer and console video games. Merchandising for the character all but dissapeared for close to a decade until SOTA Toys obtained the rights to make a Darkman action figure. SOTA Toys president Jerry Macaluso was interviewed by Dread Central:

Related Topics:
Marvel Comics - Video games - SOTA Toys - Dread Central

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This leads to an interesting story on Darkman. Universal didn?t know they owned the merchandise rights. It didn?t show up on any of their merchandise sheets. I had to convince them to spend a little time and have their lawyers look into it. I knew at the time that film was made Sam (Raimi) didn?t have the power to retain those rights so it HAD to be Universal even though they said they didn?t have them. Turns out I was right and afterwards Darkman started to show up in all their catalogs of films available to license...

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In 2005, SOTA produced two versions of their Darkman action figure (including interchangeable head and hands to allow the figure to be either bandaged or revealing his scarred visage), as well as a Darkman statue.

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