Image Source: Official Hobbit Movie Blog.
Fantasy films enjoy their own special brand of development hell. The Hobbit is coming out in December of this year, after a decade of delays. The Elfquest movie has been in and out of development for about as long as Elfquest itself has existed (est. 1978). In January 2012, Bleeding Cool reported that Time-Warner, beloved overlord of DC Comics' nu direction, has shelved the Elfquest film because they don't want The Hobbit to overshadow it. Apparently, the world can only handle one film with elves in it at a time. The Pinis, two of my favourite Boomers who brought their ideals to life, remain philosophical. They are producing a new series called Elfquest: The Final Quest. Wendy Pini responded on Facebook with Cutter's and Skywise's reaction from Beverly Hills.
Image Source: Bleeding Cool.
Other posts on J. R. R. Tolkien are here; posts on Elfquest are here, here and here.
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It's too bad, although any future interpretation of Elfquest can only benefit from further advances in film technology. We're now there (with Avatar) but it's still incredibly expensive. I remember when the debate was whether to film Elfquest in live-action or traditional animation. Given the technological limitations at the time, the former probably wouldn't have held up well. I don't know if Elfquest is getting a lot of new fans these days though, if that's a consideration in studio support for the project down the road.
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. Maybe this was why the Pinis placed everything up for free on their website - to build the fanbase.
ReplyDeleteElfquest is probably as difficult as the Watchmen to get right as a film. One could have said the same of LOTR and the Hobbit, though. EQ done properly, either live action or animated, would take a very special non-corporate-minded group of people to drive it. I think that was why LOTR worked in the early 2000s - they were an indie film crew, basically, with a huge budget and big opportunity. The current mindset dominating Time-Warner's treatment of its DC properties is cringe-worthy to say the least. It gets worse with every passing month. So it is probably better that those people are not overseeing an EQ movie for the time being. We should settle back like Skywise and order another martini. That said, the fact that the Pinis have tried for over 30 years to see their project made into a movie is mind-boggling.