‘Fables’ Gets ‘Kick-Ass’ Screenwriter
We may finally be inching closer to Fabletown.Kick-AssscreenwriterJane Goldmanhas been hired to write the long-gestatingFablesadaptation, whichNikolaj Arcel(The Royal Affair) will direct.
Based on the Vertigo Comics series byBill Willingham,Fablescenters around a community of fairy tale characters (or “Fables”) who’ve been exiled from their homeland and now reside in modern-day New York. More on the newFablesscreenwriter after the jump.
Comic Book Resourcesgot theFablesscoop from producerDavid Heyman:
Heyman also spoke about what attracted him to the property:
I’m drawn to stories about outsiders, and I think the Fables are outsiders. They’re people torn from the place where they were raised, by The Adversary. They arrive in a New York City-type place, and how we’re approaching is that they’re people who are all separate, and how they ultimately have to form the community to survive. They’re all inhabiting their own little universes within this world. But they have to form this community, and that really appealed to me. And I just think the characters are so vivid. And I also think the farm is, again, it’s very human. That’s what I like. It’s a challenging film.
(The farm he refers to is the upstate New York outpost of the Fables community, which houses all of the non-human Fables who can’t blend in in New York City — like the Three Little Pigs and the Three Bears.)
Heyman certainly knows his way around contemporary fantasy — he’s best known for producing all eightHarry Pottermovies. Goldman’s credits includeKingsman: The Secret Service,X-Men: First Class, the Neil Gaiman adaptationStardust, and the upcomingMiss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children.
An adaptation ofFableshas been in the works for about a decade. NBC optioned the book for a potential TV series in 2005, but ultimately decided not to move forward with it; a few years later, ABC did the same thing in 2008. Both networks ultimately wound up with their own version of a “fairy tales in the modern world” series —Grimmat NBC, andOnce Upon a Timeat ABC.
Fableswas then eyed for a movie adaptation, but it’s been slow going. Arcel signed on to directin summer 2013and that was the last we heard about the project until now. At that time,Jeremy Slater(of the upcomingFantastic Fourreboot) was working on the script but it’s unclear if Goldman and Arcel are now working off of his screenplay.
