Ah, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen. That much-maligned 2003 superhero effort, spawned from Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s graphic novels, that failed to generate much love either from fans, critics or – given its eventual $179 million global haul from a $78 million budget, not counting marketing – the box office bean counters. 20th Century Fox thinks there’s life in the property yet and is trying another movie.
Moore and O’Neil’s alt-history stories follow a group of literary characters – Alan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Doctor Jekyll and Dracula’s Mina Harker among them – as they band together to fight off monstrous threats to the realm. It would seem to be fertile fodder for a movie, but that first attempt, which had Stephen Norrington directing a cast including Sean Connery and Jason Flemyng, just didn’t seem able to take full advantage of it.
According to Deadline, Fox has a producing team including Ira Napoliello, Matt Reilly and John Davis on board to start finding writers and directors who might be able to turn the concept into a functioning franchise, wiping the slate clean for a new attempt. And this follows the studio’s 2013 TV version, which never made it out of development. So if you had your choice of filmmaking team, whom would you entrust to make the League work this time?