Gentlemen, Be Repeated

League of Extraordiary Gentlemen movie posterJohn Bigboote’s brother John Reboote has announced that the next franchise to be revived will be The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Variety reports –

Ira Napoliello and Matt Reilly are overseeing the remake, based on Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s graphic novel of the same name, centering on Victorian-era literary characters such as Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde teaming to fight a common enemy.

Plans for a Fox TV series based on the property stalled in 2013.

29 thoughts on “Gentlemen, Be Repeated

  1. I hope the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen squares off against the cast of Penny Dreadful in the Great War of Public Domain Characters.

  2. Hell, Penny Dreadful is already doing an excellent job of this, but I wish them the best of luck. Please don’t be as crappy as the first movie was

  3. The Invisible Man isn’t public domain in the movies; they had to invent a brother of the original who also used the invisibility formula.

  4. Well, at least this won’t be a case of a reboot stepping all over a beloved original, like The Wicker Man or The Italian Job. No one is likely to shed any tears for the original LoEG movie.

  5. I was and am still so frustrated with the original LOEG movie. Such wasted potential. Thusly this is a reboot that I’m happy to have happen

  6. Won’t Wells be out of copyright next year? Though USAinian copyright terms are so convoluted that it might not be the case over there.

  7. @Jon Meltzer:

    I was just wondering that. Is Alan Moore connected with or getting anything from this?

  8. Moore refused any connection with the last one, and he seems to have become more hardline about keeping his name off things since (see the latest Miracleman reprints).

  9. It seems like when a cast and crew really like each other and enjoy what they’re doing, it really comes through in the final product.

    The reverse is, of course, also true.

  10. I was really disappointed by the first one. Didn’t know the comic but the concept has great potential. I hope they do better on this one.

  11. The comic was considerably better than the move. No, I will change that. The comic was *infinitely* better than the movie.

    Alan Moore has an obvious love for and encyclopedic knowledge of the stories and characters of British fiction (Huckleberry Finn or whoever it was was an insertion of the moviemakers, presumably added to appeal to an American audience). For all that Moore’s imagination is very dark, he knows his stuff.

    The original movie appeared to have thrown out all the depth, intelligence, and interest of the source material. For example, it turned Mina Harker from the truly scary character she was into a vampire. Yawn. And, as a friend of mine pointed out, the movie passed up on a climactic airship battle over London between Moriarty and Fu Manchu in favor of … a car chase and blowing up a remote base.

  12. The first one was pretty. I loved a lot of the costuming and designs. You can do so much with that aesthetic…and then they attached the rest of the movie to it.

    I am hopeful, but not holding my breath.

  13. LoEG was one of those movies that seemed snakebit from the beginning. At about the midpoint of script writing, the studio wanted to include Tom Sawyer, but they didn’t extend the writers any additional time. Then just as filming started in Prague, which was standing in for Venice, the city was hit by some of the worst floods int he regions history. Sets were destroyed and had to be rebuilt, but Fox, again, didn’t extend the production time. They had a hard date they wanted the movie to open, and would not deviate from it.

    Connery and the director, Stephen Norrington, hated each other, almost coming to blows at one point. There were rumors Norrington hardly participated in the editing process, he didn;t do any press, and Connery was so put off by the whole expierence he fulfilled the bare minimum of his press obligations and walked away.

    But, the Big Killer of the LoEG was that it opened the same weekend as the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

  14. Have I ever mentioned my theory that someone, somewhere, has invented a vast and terrible engine that runs on Alan Moore’s pure unmitigated rage? And that they’ve got connections at Marvel, DC and many major movie studios?

    It’s really the only theory I’ve got to explain all this.

  15. The last movie was also the target for a plagiarism lawsuit. Moore, who had nothing to do with the movie, was forced to give a lengthy deposition where he was questioned by the plaintiff’s attorney. His comments suggest that it was not a pleasant experience.

    I’d guess he’d want nothing to do with any movie version of any of his works. Of course, I’ve been wrong about this sort of thing before.

  16. Moore will probably be unable to have his name taken off this, because he gave permission to use his name before, he has no avenue to legally revoke it, and the producers probably don’t see any mileage in being nice to him at this point.

    He will almost certainly be due money from a remake, and will probably have it sent to Kevin O’Neill instead, since that’s been a consistent part of his strategy for disassociating himself from movie projects he views with disdain.

  17. At first I thought Adam-Troy Castro’s comment started “Unlike many, I am not filled with nope…” until I realized what he was actually saying. As it is, I pretty much agree with him.

    Are people actually getting their hopes up about this?

  18. Honestly, what I loved about the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Series werea all the references to Victorian fiction. Somehow I can’t see that aspect of the comics translating well to a movie. It would be a swell feature to run footnotes across the bottom for the DVD release, but most moviegoers would find that annoying for the theatrical release and I doubt many of them would care.

  19. I know this has probably been discussed to death pretty much everywhere, but is there some sort of critical screenwriter shortage in the land where all we do is adapt books and comics (for the most part, badly) and remake old films and TV shows? It seems like there’s just a concentration of non-original material coming out of Hollywood lately.

  20. If you like “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” — try and find a copy of the The Man from U.N.C.L.E paperback entitled “The Rainbow Affair.” Everybody who was anybody in the UK fictional crime/detective milieu is in there.

    I wish some publisher would collect these and publish them — I’d love an anthology or three…

  21. The studios are being lazy and not interested in producing anything that does not have the word “blockbuster” nailed to it. That would mean a move, toys, video games, sequels, clothing, fast food menus, novelizations and anything that can be added on.
    PREDESTINATION–one of the best films of last year–who saw it?
    Maybe Simon Pegg was right: superhero movies dumb you down. And the industry.

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