As any huffy pre-teen can tell you, comic books are not just about superheroes and superheroines and supervillains and super powers and well, all that other super stuff; there are plenty of books available that chronicle all sorts of things that don’t require any interest in the Avengers or the Justice League or similar. (As a huffy pre-teen, I was deep into Archie comic books, so I’ve been there, done that.)
Alan Moore’s The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a prime example as to what comic books can do and be, especially when they can do and be just about anything. Moore started the series back in 1999, initially interested in bringing Justice League-styled sensibilities (a big team of disparate heroes with individual fame, organized around a common bad guy-offing goal) to the Victorian era. Soon enough, however, Moore’s series began to unite various heroes of fiction—Captain Nemo, Allan Quatermain, the Invisible Man, etc.—into sprawling stories that injected said heroes into existing stories (like H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds). It’s basically the perfect series for literature nerds who like their fiction with a generous dash of geekery.
Certainly, it deserved something better than the 2003 film adaptation of the series (or, more precisely, the first volume of the series). Although the Stephen Norrington movie featured some cool casting—like Sean Connery as Quatermain and Jason Flemyng as Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde—the film didn’t quite hit the right notes and wasn’t exactly respectful to Moore’s source material (rights issues didn’t help, and neither did the decision to insert an American Secret Service agent who is literally Tom Sawyer). The film made just under $180 million at the box-office, a far cry from other comic book films of the same vintage, like X2 or Spider-Man 2.
Which is all a nice, long way of saying that perhaps The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen should get another chance at being something better, or at least something more in line with its source material. Have we got news for you!
Tracking Board reports that Fox and Davis Entertainment are now “planning to reboot a potential franchise” based on the series. This comes after Fox attempted to turn the Moore books into a television series back in 2013, which never even made it as far as the casting process (ouch).
The outlet reports that “Fox is looking to nail the new adaptation of League, and is currently looking for a director to continue to develop the reboot…The reboot details are minimal at this time, and the exact storyline they’ll be tracking in hopes of launching a franchise are undetermined,” but considering how much the first film strayed from the material at hand, this is the rare case of a series that could go full reboot with great results (or at least ones that don’t involve the random appearance of Tom Sawyer).