Ever since comedic actor Seth Rogen announced a new Green Hornet movie, superhero fans have feared all the years of work to get the genre taken seriously would be undone.

The later Batman movies of the 90s had made comic book adaptations a neon-lit no-go zone and it took Blade and then X-Men to revive them again. Now we have solid releases such as The Dark Knight and Iron Man delivering accessible, credible hits.

Rogen, previously known as a chubby comedian and not for any action hero roles, has co-written Green Hornet with Superbad partner Evan Goldberg. He will also play the lead role of newspaper publisher Britt Reid who has an alter-ego as the eponymous masked crimefighter, aided by a martial arts sidekick called Kato and a hi-tech car called Black Beauty.

French filmmaker Michel Gondry stepped in to direct the feature earlier this year, and that has gone some way to appeasing fanxiety on the forums. But others still fear it will end up being kitsch and silly.

But Gondry insists it won’t be a hammy send-up. According to Empire magazine, he said: “It’s an action movie with some comedy in it. The action will be fast and furious and the comedy will come from the dynamic between Kato and Britt Reid.”

The movie comes out on December 17, 2010. It also stars Jay Chou as Kato and Cameron Diaz as reporter and love interest Lenore ‘Casey’ Case, while Christoph Waltz (the nasty Nazi in Inglourious Basterds) has replaced Nicolas Cage as gangster villain Chudnofsky.

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