Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with some more interesting news. I must admit to having never read Alan Moore's V FOR VENDETTA, though I have torn through FROM HELL, WATCHMEN, the first LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN and think his THE KILLING JOKE is one of the single best Batman stories ever created. I guess V FOR VENDETTA just slipped under my radar, but after heading over to Amazon and reading the synopsis it's got me itching to check it out. I love What If stories anyway (Marvel's What If line was one of my favorite guilty pleasures as a kid) and the whole series is a What if. What if Germany had won WW2 and Britain becomes a fascist state?
Anyway, the good folks at Empire Online have a story up about the man who is going to direct the big screen adaptation of this well loved graphic novel. READ THAT STORY HERE!!! It appears James McTeigue is going to helm the film.
Now, McTeigue's experience is as the First Assistant Director to the Wachowski Bros on THE MATRIX TRILOGY and the 1st AD to Lucas on EPISODES 2 and 3. Does this qualify him as up for the job? I guess that's up to his passion and whether or not he can step up to the plate. So far there hasn't been one adaptation of Moore's work to the screen that has been done any kind of justice. LXG and FROM HELL both fell short of the mark, so McTeigue has a chance to be the first to adapt Moore's genius to the screen.
However, the history of ADs jumping into the director's chair isn't really comforting. Doug Aarniokoski was Robert Rodriguez' AD before directing the dreadful HIGHLANDER: ENDGAME and Roger Christian was Lucas' Second Unit Director on PHANTOM MENACE and he went on to direct BATTLEFIELD EARTH. Would it be lack of experience or just lack of power, doing big studio pictures and getting bullied into making a homogenized turd? Who knows?
I'd be more comfortable hearing that a visionary director who has proven they share Moore's sensibilities has signed on, but McTeigue must have shown something to the powers that be to trust him with this property. I'll hope for the best, but no matter what happens, I'm now going to check out the book. I greatly look forward to it.
