Bill Willingham‘s Fables, published from DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, has long been a series that seems ripe for a television adaptation. Both NBC and ABC have had a Fables television show in development at some point, with ABC later going on to create Once Upon a Time, a series that’s also about characters of fairy tales exiled and living in the real world. But it’s been a while since there was any movement on the Fables television front, and now we may know why.
Some folks behind the Harry Potter movies have announced that they’re pushing a theatrical film version of the comics to Hollywood.
This is the second time Fables has had a chance at the big screen: about ten years ago, Warner Bros. announced its intentions to develop the series for film with the Jim Henson creature shop, but that initiative eventually fell through.
David Heyman and Jeffrey Clifford are some of the folks behind Heyday Films, the production studio behind every Harry Potter film adaptation, and they’ve have tapped writer Jeremy Slater to craft the script. The announcement of a screenwriter on a film project isn’t really a good sign of whether or not it’s got a chance of actually getting made, but the project also has a director in Nikolaj Arcel.
Arcel’s resume includes such interesting tidbits as a directorial stint on A Royal Affair, nominated for an Oscar in Best Foreign Film, and a writing credit on 2009’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. So far Slater’s only credit is The Fantastic Four, but don’t worry. It’s the Fantastic Four reboot, not the 2005 film. There’s still plenty of time before we know if that one’s a dud too.
(via The Hollywood Reporter.)
