League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

[Unidentified Source]

Anyone catch this movie yet? I wonder if it's as interesting as it looks.

[Silent Bob]

I, uh, heard it sucked. Ebert's got an amusing trashing of it in his review. I think it'd be more enjoyable to read that than actually watch the movie.

[Reverend Jax]

Yeah, the reviews have been less than flattering. The reviews for Pirates of the Caribbean have been pretty good though.

[The NZA]

Fox is bringing it back as a TV series

 

Michael Green (The River, Heroes, Smallville) will serve as writer and executive producer on a pilot based on the comic, and if the show is picked up to series he’ll serve as show runner as well.

[...]

the show is described as “a drama based on Moore’s graphic novels about a group of Victorian age literary characters, including Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde who team up to fight a common enemy.”

 

[Lycaon]

Oh christ...

[Reverend Jax]

I'm guessing somewhat over at Fox noticed that the rights to some comic book property that they own (but he doesn't recognize) were about to revert back to the original owner, so he researched the cheapest way to legally retain those rights because, why the fuck not? And he determined that by developing a pilot that wouldn't be picked up, and putting out a press release, that would be sufficient to retain the rights to LXG for another ten years.

[Thrizzle]

All of my wut.

 

 

[Iambaytor]

Like I put on Facebook, I don't think that parts of this idea are terrible. Moore doesn't own the characters, just this specific interpretation of them and I think the main reason they don't just call it something else is because they know they'll be accused of ripping it off (I think this is the reason for most in-name-only remakes and adaptations, that and brand recognition) so somebody just needs to draft a script with the concept of Victorian era public domain superheroes and Alan Moore needs to publicly say "this is entirely different, it's okay" and we can all happily go our separate ways.

[Thrizzle]

I think the main reason they don't just call it something else is because they know they'll be accused of ripping it off

 

Here's the thing though: that's exactly what they did before. They ripped somebody else off and slapped the League name on it for the recognition, because if they had called it Cast of Characters they would have been accused of ripping off LoEG.

And they got sued.

And they cut the plaintiff a hefty check.

And that makes them assholes.

And you know what assholes do. They shit all over everything.

 

So I'm not really thrilled with the idea of assholes, who have proven themselves to be both irresponsibly careless and blatant thieves, fucking with the name at all anymore.

[Lycaon]

I can't imagine a tv series of this being even halfway decent, especially if it's on a regular network channel (as opposed to HBO or something).

[Iambaytor]

Here's the thing though: that's exactly what they did before. They ripped somebody else off and slapped the League name on it for the recognition, because if they had called it Cast of Characters they would have been accused of ripping off LoEG.

And they got sued.

And they cut the plaintiff a hefty check.

And that makes them assholes.

And you know what assholes do. They shit all over everything.

 

So I'm not really thrilled with the idea of assholes, who have proven themselves to be both irresponsibly careless and blatant thieves, fucking with the name at all anymore.

 

Don't take my post as a defense of Fox, they are vile creatures and deserve all the punishment they get. Their attempt at a TV show just strikes me as a chance to ape Once Upon a Time and make some of that geek property money everybody's trying to rake in these days. I don't know anything about Cast of Characters but the director seemed rather genuine about just wanting to do the movie the way it was, I don't know if the studio that owned the Cast of Characters script had any real case against them and it's pretty shitty that they didn't do the research and sued the creator of the property rather than the studio developing the movie based on it. It's very possible they just snagged the LXG license so Cast of Characters couldn't claim plagiarism. I do not know, nor do I care.

 

I am implying that they should NOT use the name, make Cast of Characters or whatever the fuck they want. Moore's doing his own thing with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen so just make something in the spirit of what the book was originally and call it something else. I'm not even saying Fox, I just want someone to make this idea in a more traditional way, because it's a good idea and I like it and I wish somebody would just do it.

[Thrizzle]

Gotcha. Yeah, that sounds fine and dandy to me.