The good news is that Neil Gaiman will be the subject of the new Sequart documentary, in the spirit of Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods and Warren Ellis: Captured Ghosts documentaries. As with the other two, Patrick Meaney will direct and Jordan Rennert will produce along with executive producers Mike Phillips and Julian Darius. Here’s the teaser trailer.
We’ve been suggesting a Gaiman film to complete the Brit Guy trilogy…good to see it’s happening. Sequart has two other documentaries in the pipeline for the fall, The Image Revolution, and Comics in Focus: Chris Claremont’s X-Men .
In what may actually be better movie news, Empire Magazine’s interview with Neil Gaiman, above, contains some truly horrifying reports on what Sandman and Books of Magic movies of the past might have looked like. Books of Magic went through so many writers that it became a “urine soaked lemonge.”
And then he’s fired and they get somebody else in but now they’ve got a director and the director goes away and does his own draft and I look at the [current] script and it looks like they’re about to make it – and for all I know they may have, because I called DC Comics and said, ‘This has nothing in common with Books of Magic anymore other than the heroes name is Tim Hunter and the movie is called Books of Magic. And if this movie happens, all it will do is upset any fans of Tim Hunter and the Books of Magic and make them feel used. It’s perfectly adequate for what it is, which is terrible, so why don’t we ask if [the studio] can pay us off and they can use the script and we take back the name ‘Books of Magic’ and they can call their hero something else.’ And they did and I was incredibly relieved and I have no idea if that film ever got made or not.
Whoever was working on Sandman really got the concept:
We also dodged a bullet on the worst of all the Sandman scripts. It was so bad, I couldn’t even get to the end of it. I read about 5-10 pages and went ‘I can’t bear this.’ And later read a summary of the plot on AintItCoolNews because somebody there got hold of the script, and I just felt sick the whole way [through]. [In that script] Morpheus’ first line was, ‘As if your puny weapons could hurt me, Morpheus the Mighty Lord of Dreams.’ And I went, ‘Oh no, that’s awful, this is terrible. He was kept by electromagnets underneath New York and it must have been about 1997 or ’98 because it was a millennium based plot. [The lead characters] had to do some stuff before the millennium, the lead characters were brothers, Lucifer, The Corinthian and Sandman were brothers, and it was this race against time to gather a bunch of MacGuffins before the millennium. It never got made and whoever wrote [that script] got paid more for writing that than I ever was for writing the entirety of Sandman. So in terms of how I feel about stuff [I write not becoming films], I feel fine.
This kind of thing could never happen any more in the universe where people read the source material, right? Bearing in mind this is the studio that gave you Keanu Reeves as the Cockney magician Hellblazer and these ideas become all too plausible. And WB is taking control of its own destiny very very soon. More on that in a bit.
Via Comic Book Movie
I think I donated to the Image and Claremont movies like two years ago.
Maybe they should finish a few projects first
“why don’t we ask if [the studio] can pay us off and they can use the script and we take back the name ‘Books of Magic’ and they can call their hero something else.’ And they did and I was incredibly relieved and I have no idea if that film ever got made or not.”
And now you know the story behind the movie “I Am Legend”. ;)
Jason, we’re working on it! The Image doc is 98% done, just polishing up the visuals before locking it in. And we just have to shoot a little more b-roll for the Claremont doc, that will be done around the end of July.
Both those projects have taken way longer than expected, but in good news, the Image doc is going to be double the length we had originally anticipated for the project, and features a lot more interviews and elements than was planned. I think you’ll find it’s worth the wait.
We’re doing some preliminary shooting on the Gaiman project while wrapping things up on these, just because we want to get material from his current book tour, but editing on it won’t start until the other films are totally done. And, thanks for your support.
Granted I’m in the Ellis doc and was filmed for the Image one, but prejudice aside, I think these are pretty unique and important movies that are capturing comics history—and cultural history—in a way that no one else is doing. So a little wait is better than never.
Whenever these documentaries are finished, where can we see them?
“Does it have to be a spider?”
Was the movie “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”?
Constantine is Scouse (from Liverpool) not Cockney (London). They are at opposite ends of England and would not be very fond of being associated with one another. Essentially he should sound like a Beatle as opposed to a chimney sweep when you read him.
Just saying.
Thanks, Heidi, for your encouragement! We value your insight and love having you in our docs.
I vividly remember your intelligence during the Image interview. I think I just kept nodding absurdly at everything you were saying.
Comments are closed.