The popular comic book series Fables from DC Comics and writer Bill Willingham is now looking to find a new home at ABC, who has ordered up a pilot episode to test the waters with.
The pilot will be written by Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner, who wrote Elektra and episodes of Six Degrees. TV mega-director David Semel will do the directing. His resume is riddled with well-known products such as Buffy, Angel, Heroes, House, 90210 (old), Dawson’s Creek, and 7th Heaven among many others. The man seems to have a tag for directing pilot episodes and as you can see, whether it’s the realm of sci-fi/fantasy or teeny dramas, he’s captained some really popular shows.
For those who aren’t familiar with the comic, Fables takes pretty much every single cherished fairy tale character ever concocted and puts them in our world. They live and work among us, residing in a special section of the city (unless they’re a creature or talking animal, in which case they have to live at “The Farm”). The two main characters used in the comics are Big Bad Wolf and Snow White, and it seems that this will be the formula used for the TV show as well.
This little tidbit is bittersweet for me. While I haven’t been able to read the whole series yet, I have read a great deal of it as well as a few issues of its spin-off Jack of Fables and the thought of that world being brought to life is fantastic. If you haven’t read it, you really have to — it’s a fantastic mixture of countless childhood characters and loads of violence, sex, and mystery. It’s the beloved fairy tales we all know and love in an adult world and it just doesn’t stop being fun to read.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure how this will adapt to the small screen. If it were on HBO I would be uncontrollably excited right now, but this is ABC trying to make what would easily be an R-rated movie into a mainstream national TV show and that’s something that’s never good. For now, I’m going to wait and see how things shape up; maybe they’ll find a recipe that works out in the end, but I’m not holding my breath. I fear that said adult elements are just what really makes Fables the amazingly twisted ride that it is and subtracting that element will just ultimately have fairy tales who impersonate NYPD Blue.
If you’re interested in checking it out, follow the link below to Amazon and also, feel free to check out the first issue for free and get yourself a little taste of what I’m talking about!
Fables Vol. 1: Legends in Exile
for $9.99.
Download the first issue for free at the Vertigo site – Fables – issue #1.
[Source: THR]
