While it’s not 100% set in stone, it looks as if ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ will be coming to Fox. It’s just been announced that Michael Green (‘Heroes‘, ‘Smallville‘) is set to be the showrunner and Erwin Stoff (‘The Matrix’, ‘Kings’) will be set to executive produce. While they both have solid track records, it does look as if the co-creators of the comic, Alan Moore Kevin O’Neill, will not be on board as producers on the series. Even with that in mind, it looks as if the show has been approved for a put pilot.
Now I know when you read pilot the first thing you think is there is no guarantee that it’ll actually get produced. While that usually is true, a put pilot is slightly different as it “a deal to produce a pilot that includes substantial penalties if the pilot is not aired; a virtual guarantee that a pilot will be picked up.”
Therefore, the likelihood of seeing Alan Moore’s classic on Fox just skyrocketed.
The comic series was set in the Victorian age and include famous literary characters who had to team up to form the equivalent of ‘The Avengers’ or ‘The Justice League’ team. It included The Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, as well as Captain Nemo and was put together by Mina Harker (the protagonist in ‘Dracula‘ who was almost turned into a vampire.) It’s a tale that has actually been told from the Victorian age through modern times, so there are quite a few ways they can run with it.
The team itself has also faced many notable villains including the likes of Fu Manchu, Moriarty, the tripod aliens from ‘The War of the Worlds’, and more. With so many villains to choose from (and ones that can be used multiple times in some instances)’ there is easily enough content to base the show off of to have it last for multiple seasons if successful.
With the success of Moore’s ‘Watchmen’ and ‘V for Vendetta’, it will be interesting to see the current take on ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’. The original version starring Sean Connery didn’t fair as well as the studios had hoped.
Is Fox the right network for something that can contain quite a bit of darker elements? They’ve proven with ‘The X-Files’ and ‘Fringe‘ that they are willing to go a darker route, but for every hit show on that network, there are those, such as ‘Millennium’, that didn’t last nearly as long as it should have.
While ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’ is clearly a concept that is for the long running format, do you think it’s a show that will do well today?
