ABC will be telling us some FABLES

It's T.V. news but what the hell? Though I'm going to tell you a little story first and why Bill Willingham'sFABLES property is significant to me. Earlier this year most of you won't know, I had plans to move away from my home, to give up my life in the dreary North East of England for the pursuit of a dream. You see, I've always wanted to be a movie producer, that's kind of why I ended up doing the gig I'm doing now. Before Obsessed With Film took all my time away, I would read books, lots of books. I would love to hunt out really dog eared copies of forgotten novels, really obscure stuff, looking at their potential worth for film. Kind of like what Christopher Nolan did with the Christopher Priest novel THE PRESITGE. How he stumbled across a seemingly forgotten mid 90's novel which was loaded with so many exciting ideas and then springboarded that into a wonderfully deep movie which surpasses the novel in terms of scope and imagination. There's so many stories out there just waiting to be found. I wanted to be the guy to find them. Well around this time last year, I got the idea that it was about time in my life that I did something with myself. About time I pursued this dream. So I applied to do a very well respected Masters Degree course in Film Producing down in our capital city of London. The course would be two years and in that time, hopefully I would make enough of myself to actually pursue that as a viable career path. One of the criteria's for approval was to come up with an original idea for film or an adaptation of a book or some other source material and straight away I knew exactly what I thought needed to be adapted because it was just crying out to be made...

FABLES!

So I wrote a treatment for a HBO-style series dealing with the characters based on Vertigo's very popular comic book series. The comics are based on the idea that fairy tale characters such as Snow White and The Big Bad Wolf have been forced out of their homeland into the real modern day world of New York City and it's hidden community known as Fabletown. It's kind of like a witness protection act and they all assume new identities. The comics read as part fantasy/part detective saga as the first volume of issues revovle around the mysterious death of Rose Red, Snow White's cousin. White is now a counsellor living in the city and the Big Bad Wolf is a detective. What makes the comic series so great is that it plays around with the character stereotypes and convetions from classic fables everyone knows but twists them into reality. It's fascinating reading, I could imagine it working a little like Heroes, that kind of ensemble piece. But where the series gets doubly interesting is when the series goes back to the fairytale land... ah, just limitless possibilites. It reads like Dorothy going to the WIZARD OF OZ for the first time. Just magical. I was quite proud of my treatment. It got accepted (but I always put that down to the greatness of the source material rather than anything I wrote about the adaptation) and was invited down for an interview in the Summer. Sadly, a day before the interview, it dawned on me that I didn't have the financing to realistically go through with this. Understandably I didn't have 10 grand lieing about unfortuantely and for another year at least the dream was dead. Will I return to it in 2009? Perhaps. It would certainly allow me to see many of the early press screenings in London that I'm currently relying on the staff here to attend as I live too far away. But 10 grand is a lot of money... then there's the living costs, the whole moving away from my family and my friends. But anyway, thank fucking God someone is taking the idea of Fables and is running with it! About time, I'd say. The Hollywood Reporter say Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner (ELEKTRA, Six Degrees) are scripting a pilot for ABC based on Bill Willingham's successful series. David Semel, a frequent t.v. helmer (Buffy, Dawson's Creek, House, American Dreams, etc) will direct the pilot. I wish them well!