Vertigo's Fables - The Series

[Specter313]

The news is in from the Hollywood Reporter -- "Six Degrees" creators/executive producers Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner are penning the script for an hour long drama set at Warner Bros. TV based on the Bill Willingham-fueled Vertigo property. David Semel has come on board to direct the property which revolves around characters from fairy tales and folklore living in exile in modern-day New York.


"Their lives become interconnected in vary big way," Zicherman said. "They share a secret and a bond."


Zicherman and Metzner wouldn't elaborate which fairy tale characters will be featured in the TV series, but noted that Big Bad Wolf and Snow White, who are central to the comics, will have a similar role on the show.



"We set up a structure to allow any fairy tale character to show up in any one episode," Metzner said.


The fairy tale characters will keep some of their trademark characteristics. For instance, Prince Charming will be handsome, while Big Bad Wolf will have to shave a four-day shadow from growing back every day.


But overall, "they are just like real people in the real world who live and breathe and look just like you and me," Metzner said.


WMA-repped Zicherman and Metzner, who met in college, have been a writing team for the past 10 years.


Semel, repped by UTA and 3 Arts, has directed the pilots for such series as "Heroes," "My Own Worst Enemy," "Life" and "The Cleaner."


No casting information or network debut dates have been announced.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19070

 

[SoulManX]

The news is in from the Hollywood Reporter -- "Six Degrees" creators/executive producers Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner are penning the script for an hour long drama set at Warner Bros. TV based on the Bill Willingham-fueled Vertigo property. David Semel has come on board to direct the property which revolves around characters from fairy tales and folklore living in exile in modern-day New York.


"Their lives become interconnected in vary big way," Zicherman said. "They share a secret and a bond."


Zicherman and Metzner wouldn't elaborate which fairy tale characters will be featured in the TV series, but noted that Big Bad Wolf and Snow White, who are central to the comics, will have a similar role on the show.



"We set up a structure to allow any fairy tale character to show up in any one episode," Metzner said.


The fairy tale characters will keep some of their trademark characteristics. For instance, Prince Charming will be handsome, while Big Bad Wolf will have to shave a four-day shadow from growing back every day.


But overall, "they are just like real people in the real world who live and breathe and look just like you and me," Metzner said.


WMA-repped Zicherman and Metzner, who met in college, have been a writing team for the past 10 years.


Semel, repped by UTA and 3 Arts, has directed the pilots for such series as "Heroes," "My Own Worst Enemy," "Life" and "The Cleaner."


No casting information or network debut dates have been announced.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=19070

Hmmm I wonder

 

[Mister J]

Hopefully, they don't **** it up in translation.

 

[Sawyer]

This sounds nice, but I'm betting it goes nowhere. I hope I'm wrong, but I dont think it will make it past one season, if that.

 

[TheVileOne]

Just FYI, Raven Metzner was a writer on ELEKTRA.

I always thought Fables would make a good TV show. But aren't they saying ABC now? I mean, that wouldn't work.

It's not just that Charming is handsom and Bigby has to shave a lot. It's that Charming is basically euro-trash that didn't just marry Snow White, but he married EVERY fairy tale princess - Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, all of them.

Not to mention Bigby is the good guy and hero of this story. And he's madly in love with Snow White who kind of likes him back.

 

[Specter313]

As announced yesterday, Vertigo’s Fables may soon be translated to television as ABC has committed to a pilot for an hour-long drama series based on the comic book.

The pilot for the Fables television series will be produced by Warner Bros. TV and written by Six Degrees' Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner, who describe themselves as "lifelong comic book fans" that fell in love with the Fables comic when it debuted in 2002.

Written by Bill Willingham, the comic series follows the adventures of fairy tale characters, like Prince Charming and Red Riding Hood, who escaped from an invasion of their magical world to form a secret community in the heart of New York City.

The Vertigo comic series has been one of the publishers' more successful titles, currently on issue #79 with a spin-off series, Jack of Fables, already 30 issues strong and the mini-series Cinderella: From Fabletown with Love coming next year.

We talked to Willingham about the news of the TV pilot, whether the series has a good chance of happening at ABC, and how he feels about his comic being adapted for the small screen.

Newsarama: Bill, is this something you've known about for awhile?

Bill Willingham: This was one of those deals that was "hush-hush," "don't-dare-tell-anyone-anything," until I woke up [yesterday] morning and found out the news was well and truly out.

I had known it for awhile, yes. But being the fine young fellow I am, when DC asked me to keep it on the QT, I did. The secrets of the nation are safe with me.

This deal has been in the works for some time. And I suspect we were going to keep the secret even a little bit longer, but this Hollywood Reporter story took everyone at DC by surprise as well.

NRAMA: Do you know what the plans are?

BW: Here's what I know: The screenwriters have been working on the pilot script for some time, and several versions of that have passed through DC's and Warner's offices and received notes back. [DC's Creative Executive] Ivan Cohen mentioned that the latest version of the script has come in and it looks really good. I have not seen it yet, and the thing I asked him when we were all taken by surprise by this news, was OK, when do I see a copy of the script? And he's going to find that out for me. So boy, do I look well informed.

NRAMA: Fables has been eyed by other networks as a television series, but went nowhere. Do you have a sense of how much chance there is of the pilot actually happening this time?

BW: Well, you know, we almost got a pilot done some time ago, I believe for NBC, and that didn't go any further than the pilot screenplay. The pilot never got produced. I suspect this time that the pilot is going to be produced. And I think this time around, the desire and the commitment to actually get a series done is a little stronger. That said, it takes a thousand stages to greenlight a production, and any one of them can bring the process to a screeching halt. So let's take everything with a grain of salt, here.

NRAMA: While the writers won't say what characters will be in the TV show, they've confirmed that Big Bad Wolf and Snow White are in the pilot, right?

BW: Yes, they have confirmed that.

NRAMA: Do you like the idea of Fables being a TV series? Do you see it as something that would work for episodic television?

BW: Well, I think it's probably better suited to an episodic presentation on TV than it is to, like, a major motion picture. That said, I would have loved to see the scope of a feature film.

But I'm cautiously optimistic, I would say. The one thing I will caution everyone is that the Fables comic book will always be the official Fables story. Part of me sees this as a grand thing, and part of me worries that they'll never get it right. So I'm open to the possibility, but I will just say that the comic books are the thing.

NRAMA: As long as we're talking, Bill... things have really turned down a dark path in Fables! After the triumph in the last storyline, you'd think things would get better instead of good. Was this an avenue you wanted to take with the series?

BW: They are indeed turning down a dark road. As a matter of fact, the whole purpose of this Dark Ages story arc, which I think is the most aptly named story arc we've had so far, is the Fables have just enjoyed this great success, this great end to the war. And now, because you truly love your characters and your story, one of your duties as an author is to figure out, what kind of evil can we do to them now? What kind of obstacles can we throw their way to sort of see what they're made of and see what they can overcome? We decided to do everything to them, to take everything away from them that is the source of their power, that comforts their security.

So in the next issue, you see a dramatic example of just how high the stakes really are, and we're really going to see what these characters are made of because in this arc, we've taken away everything that props them up.

NRAMA: Is there anything else you want to tell people about the announcement that there's a pilot coming for ABC?

BW: Just that... if this is the greatest epic ever put on the small screen, it's still going to be the comics first. And I don't mean to sound like a dour old librarian in that respect. I'm open to the series. But this is the official story, and once this is translated to another medium, it could be terrible, but it could be great. We don't know. But we always have the source material.

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/120809-Willingham-Fables.html

 

[The Sage]

Shoot didn't see this before I made my thread, lol.

 

[hammerhedd11]

Wow, I'm very excited for this. I love the comics, but hopefully they don't take out what made it so original. It's weird too, I made a thread a year or two ago about how this would make a great tv show. t:

 

[TheVileOne]

I don't like it on ABC. Fables is like an R-rated mature readers books. That means no cursing, nudity, brains being blown out.

 

[Manic]

Awwww, I wanted to see the Animal Farm arc played out, complete with a certain gruesome death.

 

[The Sage]

Yeah this series really belongs on HBO. It could probably work on ABC, but I don't know what the network's restrictions are pertaining to content.

 

[Manic]

ABC is owned by Disney.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Apparently, Willingham has absolutely no involvement in the TV series. That plus the stellar work of the Elektra writing team ( ) make me think that this series may crash and burn pretty spectacularly.

 

[The Sage]

Apparently, Willingham has absolutely no involvement in the TV series.

Well, there goes rule number one of making an adaptation.

 

[terry78]

Well, there goes rule number one of making an adaptation.

When it comes to turning properties into live action, the creator is often a moot point since they transferred the rights over to whatever company distributes it. Sad to say. As soon as you find someone willing to sponsor your ****, your say gets diminished extremely.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I thought Willingham still owned the rights to Fables, though. Isn't Vertigo's stuff creator-owned unless the series features DC characters?

 

[Manic]

*sigh*

You know, I think American TV really should take a few notes from the Japanese. Whenever they take a manga and adapt it into a movie, TV show, or anime, they actually bring in the manga's creator as a consultant. They also do some of the most lazy writing ever conceived, and literally adapt pages from the manga panel-for-panel into their shows. That's why some anime like Naruto have episodes that end on seemingly random cliffhangers.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

Yeah, I wish we could get the straight page-to-screen adaptations that Japan favors sometimes. There is something to be said for originality and putting new spins on the concept, but 9 times out of 10, those new spins tend to suck.

 

[Manic]

Mostly because those new spins come from new people with bare-bones knowledge of the original work. Some staff writer for a TV show will probably just hit up Wikipedia for a quick overview of what they're writing, and try to do their own thing based on those vague online descriptions. Thus the adaptation loses much of the charm found in the original version, even if the story shown on-screen would be relatively good for some other show.

 

[Specter313]

I know, major bumpage, but could be interesting if true:

Lost producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz are developing a fairy tale drama series for ABC, with Lost co-creator and showrunner Damon Lindelof expected to serve as a consultant. Little is known about the project right now, but what are the odds that it’s an adaptation of Bill Willingham’s Fables?

It’s not just empty conjecture — well, okay, maybe it’s half-empty — as ABC picked up the rights to a Fables television series in late 2008. Six Degrees creators and executive producers Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner were attached to the series, but with little movement made in almost two full years, perhaps ABC has offloaded Fables onto Kitsis and Horowitz. The Lost duo’s resume is solid, responsible for some of the show’s best episodes as well as the screenplay for the upcoming TRON: Legacy. With Lindelof contributing, their vision of Fables could be rock solid.


But let’s assume that Kitsis and Horowitz are penning a show that has nothing to do with Fables. If that’s the case, can we also assume that the Fables series is dead, at least on ABC? Does the network really have room on its table for two different fairy tale themed dramas?


Again, just conjecture for now… but expect some more details to come to light before too long.

http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2010/10/14/are-the-lost-producers-telling-fables/

 

[Sawyer]

I was actually wondering if this might be the case when I read that yesterday, and if it is, I could'nt be happier. Certainly a better team for it than the writers of some cancelled crap like Six Degrees.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I WISH that they were working on Fables but I doubt it. And to bad since they have so many major charecters to work with and great storylines to do. I am surprised that ABC hasnt pushed for it to get made.

 

[ArthurIhde]

wow it is a great new for me

 

[Emma Frost]

this is a series I always wanted to read but have yet to get my hands on. I would check this out.

 

[Wesley Dodds]

More Vetigo stuff should be adapted to TV. It's suits the medium so much more than movies..