Top 5: Vertigo Adaptations That Almost Happened

 

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5. The Exterminators for Showtime

When this was first announced it got me really excited mainly because I thought it would get more eyes on this gem of a book. The Exterminators was a great book that I think many have forgotten about. It was written by Simon Oliver (Who also had a great Hellblazer mini. Can somebody find out what happened to him?) and drawn by Tony Moore fresh off The Walking Dead and Fear Agent. It was really disgusting but tons of fun and would have paired up perfectly with a show like Dexter. 

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4. We3 with Screenplay by Grant Morrison

The idea was that Morrison would write the screenplay for New Line Cinema and that all the animals would be computer generated, just like in Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties. 

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3. Shia LeBouf/D.J. Caruso present Y: The Last Man

There seemed to be a lot of waffling on this project. Caruso wanted to direct it as a movie, then said it was too much for one movie and it would have to be three movies, then LeBouf said he wasn’t interested, then he said he was, so on and so on. The one thing that was confirmed was that “Yes, a REAL monkey would be used for the role of Ampersand.”

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2. A Garth Ennis, Kevin Smith,and James Marsden, er..I mean HBO and Mark Steven Johnson, or perhaps a Sam Mendes D.J. Caruso directed Preacher

Ennis teamed up with Kevin Smith and tried to get funding from Mirimax. Harvey Weinstein didn’t really get the comic. James Marsden was cast. It went nowhere. HBO got the rights and assigned the project to hit machine Mark Steven Johnson (Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Simon Birch), he dropped it probably because When in Rome is so similar and Sam Mendes picked up the torch. Mendes then handed it over to D.J. Caruso as recently has 2011. There hasn’t been any movement since.

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1. Sandman directed by Roger Avary

Frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator and decent director in his own right was set to direct this film. Avary became good friends with Gaiman but enemies with Warner Brothers. He was eventually fired and the project went through hundreds of different screenwriters. Gaiman has stated publicly and often that he hopes it never gets made saying “The Sandman movie is in development hell and may it rot there forever.” Avary and Gaiman would later collaborate on the script for Zemekis’ Beowolf, a film described as “Eh, it was okay.” by almost everyone.
There is a great chapter on this whole event in David Hughes’ book Tales from Development Hell.

Comments

  1. Exterminators was soooooooo good. Great series.

    What DID happen to Simon Oliver? I thought he would be the next Remender, Aaron, guy from Phonograph, etc.

    Must have pissed someone off.

  2. I hope Sandman never gets the screen treatment. There are so many nuances and I would hate to see one of the most interesting comics out there get anything less than the perfect treatment. It MIGHT work if the comic was adapted panel by panel, Watchmen style.

  3. In April DC announced a new Vertigo-book by Simon Oliver that was supposed to launch in fall of 2012 called Collider. With the state Vertigo is in, it might never see the light of day.

    • UPDATE:
      This is the last Update I found on Robbie Rodriguez blog. It from Dezember and he’s the artist for COllider
      -” Collider is still moving a head. I just turned in issue 4″

    • Nice, the concept of Collider sounded really cool and Oliver is a great writer. I was worried either he got too busy like when he was supposed to take over Hellblazer after Diggle left or Vertigo canned the project as they seem to not like publishing things lately.

  4. I absolutely loved the Preacher series and i am so glad a film was never made of it. They just would not of done it justice, especially the names that were attached to it. Mark Steven Johnson oh dear, oh dear!

  5. I agree with Preacher or Sandman not being made. What with all the content in these comics I don’t see how each story would translate well in to t.v. or movies.

    And last week, John Layman wrote on twitter that there won’t be a Chew t.v. series on Showtime. Oh boy…

  6. I just re-read Preacher over the weekend and am torn about the prospect of the story in other media. I know that the series will always exist as it is and will always be awesome and I know that a TV show could be really good, but I think it would be VERY difficult to pull off.

    It’s interesting that Marsden was attached to it, as I was reading I saw one of Fabry’s covers that reminded me of him quite a bit. Anyone have a dream cast for any of these series if they are made into movies or TV shows?

  7. I thought Y was really (ok… I know what that sounds like) being made now as one movie by Dan Trachtenberg. I have a lot of reservations about it transfering to just one movie too. HBO series would work.

    What I really want to see is a Saga movie. Just imagine it…

  8. I LOVE WE3!

    Would be great to see that as a movie – one of my favorite books of all time.

    I hope the Y movie turns out to be good.

  9. I agree that it’s probably a good thing nobody tried to translate the sensibility of “Preacher” to TV, even HBO, though I was a bit fond of the Marsden casting. He’s from Oklahoma and I don’t think he’s ever PLAYED someone in that region from a film, so I would’ve liked to see it for that reason (plus he’s a really versatile actor, which he certainly didn’t get to show off in X-Men, and having somebody who could play comedy would have been a nice fit for Jesse).