We’re now fully ensconced in the age of comic and graphic novel adaptations, and I couldn’t be happier, though I’ll be the first to admit neither Hollywood nor indie studios have quite figured out the perfect formula to getting it right the majority of the time. One only has to look back to last year’s Kick-Ass 2 and R.I.P.D. as proof. But the comic medium grows larger every day, offering up mounds of new material for producers to bring to wider swaths of audiences.
The film rights to one of my favorite comic series of all time, Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man, will soon revert back to its creators, so it's a good time to revisit a handful of other graphic novels and comic series that we'd love to see finally make it to the big screen. These are only the tip of the iceberg, mind you, as this list could easily go on for ages, but these are titles that have actually gotten an illustrated foot in the door and are waiting on the next big step. Let’s get a conversation going in the comments about other works you guys would like to see turned into films (and even those you would hate to see.)
Locke & Key
Honestly, this list just as easily could have been Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s genre-bender Locke & Key five times in a row. This spooky and darkly comedic series came to a most glorious end last month, after spending the last few years telling the era-spanning story of the Lockes after the murder of the family patriarch Rendell. Siblings Bode, Tyler and Kinsey find themselves living at the Keyhouse, a magical abode that serves as the lynchpin to a supernatural mystery involving murderous ghosts, ancient caves and a bevy of multi-powered keys that give their users all kinds of strange abilities. There’s no way to give a proper synopsis in just a paragraph, and there’s really no way to fit this extensive story into a single movie, but dammit if I’m not frothing at the mouth for it anyway.
Most people would agree that Locke & Key is ripe for the storytelling that episodic television allows, but that idea came to a screeching halt when the DreamWorks TV pilot was passed over by FX. In stepped Universal Pictures, along with genre-meisters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, who were most recently behind Enders Game and Star Trek Into Darkness. At last notice, a mystery screenwriter was hired to pen a script, but the real trick will be nailing a director who can pull of the dazzling and varying visuals that Rodriguez packed into every issue. I wish there was a key that could speed this process up.
The Mighty
Non-comic readers may not be aware that there is an entire world of superheroes that exist outside of DC and Marvel's most iconic titles. But one super-powered narrative that everyone should know about is DC’s The Mighty, from Peter J. Tomasi and Keith Champagne. It initially looks like a limited and slightly derivative take on the "hero gone bad" idea, but stands out as a wholly original and solid tale throughout its 12-issue run.
The story follows Alpha One, the all-powerful and trusted American hero and Lt. Gabriel Cole of Section Omega, a police force dedicated to assisting the superbeing. But as Alpha One becomes jaded with his role and inches down the path of ultimate evil, Cole rises up to become Omega’s greatest asset. His link with the hero ties back to a devastating tragedy in his past, and he is the key to keeping this one-man army from destroying everything he’d spent so long saving. Can’t you just hear the orchestral stabs?
Paramount acquired the rights to the series back in 2011, and it’s been in differing stages of development ever since. There’s enough story here to cover multiple films, should they want to go the franchise route, but it would work well enough as a one and done. Either way, it’ll be worthy counterprogramming for anyone sick of Zack Snyder’s vision and Marvel’s constant barrage of origin stories.
Bone
From musclebound brutes to big-nosed hoots, we come to Jeff Smith’s excellent children’s series Bone, with its throwback black-and-white illustrations and deeply rich and fantastical stories that work for all ages. Basically the story follows the three Bone cousins – the everyman protagonist Fone Bone, the greedy bastard Phoney Bone and the simple-minded Smiley Bone – as they are banished from their home in Boneville and begin a quest across a desert and a valley that involves an ancient map, dragons, love interests, cow races, dumb rats and a whole host of clever dialogue and exciting sequences in between.
Bone has drawn many comparisons to the Lord of the Rings series in terms of scope and subject matter, and Warner Bros. is the latest studio to recognize the wealth of material earning that comparison. They bought up the rights to the series over five years ago, and have since come up with three scripts for a 3D animated, with a four-minute short produced that Smith himself said was "pretty mind-blowing." With 55 issues to draw stories from, Warner has quite a task in remaining faithful to the handmade feel of the comics while making the action (and noses) leap off the page and into audiences’ faces.
Hack/Slash
The splat-tastic horror comic Hack/Slash is another project that has been tossed around Hollywood for a small while, but it seems like this of all the entries on this list would have made it to theaters by now, what with studios finally taking advantage of the genre with the highest profit yield.
Relativity picked it up in 2012 and attached director Marcus Nispel, most famous for 2003’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, as well as 2009’s remake of Friday the 13th. Neither of those was a particularly memorable venture, but Nispel was more notable than the scripts, which never strayed an inch beyond formulaic.
Hack/Slash can be described a lot of ways, but formulaic isn’t one of them. Created by Tim Steely as a series of one-shots that eventually became an ongoing series, Hack/Slash centers on Cassie Hack, a twist on the stereotypical "final girl" at the end of a horror movie, and her hulking gas mask-wearing partner Vlad. Together, they go around destroying a plethora of monsters called Slashers, which range from undead killers to still-living maniac killers. It’s loaded with bloody and sometimes cheesy violence and over-the-top action. This is one that The Raid’s Gareth Evans needs to get behind.
Cowboy Ninja Viking
Perhaps the least likely to attract mass audiences, a big screen adaptation of A.J. Lieberman and Riley Rossmo’s 10-issue series Cowboy Ninja Viking would be almost as amazing as finding out the government really had a secret program like this. Dr. Sebastian Ghislain created the Triplet Program, a counter-intelligence unit filled with patients suffering from multiple personality disorders. Once the unit is disbanded, many of its members turn into deadly assassins, and it’s up to the highly talented Duncan (who displays the traits of the titular trio) to find the others and take them down. Other characters include "Hitman – Navy Seal – Roadie for Dokken," "Executioner – Sports Broadcaster – Samurai," and "Flight Attendant – Joan of Arc – Amazonian Warrior," to name but a few.
While originally a Disney project, Universal picked up the rights in 2012 and brought in World War Z director Mark Forster to adapt. This movie wouldn’t need to be anywhere near as large and epic in scope as that film, but it wouldn’t hurt if Brad Pitt stepped in as the title character. Though it will probably go to a younger actor. It could easily be a franchise, as the stories aren’t so particular that they couldn’t be expanded upon. But first we need to actually see the first one getting made. If it doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to be one disappointed Writer Reader Father.
