By: Russ Burlingame on June 24, 2012
“The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant,” Watchmen and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen creator Alan Moore told MTV News in 2009. “These people may be able to add up and balance the books, but in every other area they are stupid and incompetent and don’t have any talent.”
Nevertheless, he’ll be wading hip-deep into the film world, according to a report at Twitch, by working on a series of films with his longtime friend Mitch Jenkins, to be known collectively as Show Pieces. The first of the films, Act of Faith, has been shot already and has a poster. The next in what a press release describes as ”a multi-layered, multi-episode narrative created by Moore and brought to life by Jenkins” will begin shooting this summer and will be called Jimmy’s End. It’s unclear how many other episodes will be involved.
The short, ”occult” and “noir flecked” films will be the first that Moore has written for the screen, having been completely uninvolved in the adaptations of his work including From Hell, Watchmen and V for Vendetta have seen Moore actively campaign against them while demanding his name not be on the film.
During the course of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen film adaptation, a screenwriter claimed that 20th Century Fox had plagiarized his script and only optioned Moore’s comic book as a “smokescreen” to hide their theft. Moore was deposed and later said that he would have expected better treatment had he ”molested and murdered a busload of retarded children after giving them heroin.” The experience left him despondent and more committed than ever to removing himself from Hollywood versions of his work.
Moore says he has directed all of his royalties and license fees from such films to his co-creators and at least one–Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons–has agreed that’s the case.
Twitch says the films are are set to debut at an event for New York’s The Creator’s Project in October, and then will be available on The CreatorsProject.com shortly after that.
