Going Hollywood
Mark Millar announced The Secret Service on a Wednesday, the movie was announced on a Thursday. Supercrooks was announced as a movie and comic at the same time at Kapow Comic Con. Comics have gone hollywood mainstream.
This has become the question for a majority of creator owned comics on the stands, and with Millar in particular it’s almost become a joke that as soon as he has a new comic it’s already being adapted to a film before he gets past the name of the book. With the success of Walking Dead and demise of the box office king that is Harry Potter the movie studios are looking to comics as the next tentpole franchise. Criminal: Coward is to be adapted by David Slade with a script written by Ed Brubaker, Red 2 is coming in 2013, seemingly without the help of Warren Ellis.
Comics have become Hollywood and there is no escaping it. It’s simpler to buy the rights to an indie book than it is to get the rights to a hero from the big two. So with this trend in right sales we cannot help but wonder why they even bother with the middle step any more. Why not just write the script and shop it around? Get an artist to whip up some concept art and there you go.
Most creators are starting to write their books with hollywood and the mainstream audience in mind, if a creator owned book is mainstream it gets optioned, if a mainstream superhero book is good enough then it might be adapted into a movie, cartoon or animated film plot. Matt Fraction worked on Iron Man, Brian Bendis on Iron Man, The Avengers and has other movie inputs as well as a Secret Invasion style plot point in season two of the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon. Brubaker was a consultant on Captain America and JMS on Thor, heck he was even IN the movie!
Alex De Campi is fundering her new book via Kickstarter and there is an option to contribute enough money to actually buy the rights for the book to adapt it into a film. The aforementioned Chew, Walking Dead and Criminal are just the tip of the iceberg for rights that aren’t currently held by Hollywood and in development. Memoir is being optioned for TV, Y the Last Man and Preacher are still in development hell, The Vault is being set up by Johnny Depp‘s studio and there are rumors the rights to Saga by Brian K. Vaughan have already been bought before we have anything more than an image and names attached.
Comics are no longer just books, they are platforms to new media.
All of these books have a mainstream appeal that transcends the written word and gets executives buzzing to buy the rights. It’s hard to blame creators for seeing this and not changing their output a little. Grant Morrison has penned a few scripts for Hollywood including one about aliens and dinosaurs that he then plans on developing as a comic. Grant has been a huge name in comics since the 80’s and even he is dabbling in script writing, forgoing creator owned work except a small project here and there, like Joe the Barbarian. Even Joe has been optioned as a film.
In reality this is one of the main draws to doing creator owned work, if the book gets big enough and interest is there you can sell the rights and make a pay check to fund your future work. Brian Bendis sold the Powers rights, Frank Cho the Liberty Meadows, Max Allan Collins sold the rights to Road to Perdition. These sales have helped the writers stay afloat, and for those who work primarily in creator owned comics and under independent companies these sales are vital to their future.
I asked earlier about why even take this middle road, why develop the comic if you just want the fast pay check. The answer in many cases is the love of the medium. Many creators simply want to tell a story they’ve always had in mind and comics are the easiest way to portray that idea. Look at Chew, John Layman pitched it to a few companies before going with Image to self publish it. He never would have imagined it would have taken off like it has, let alone imagined it as a TV show. Yet the rights have sold and it could be on our TV’s in a few years.
But there is also common sense. How many scripts are sold each year that never get made? How many movies get stuck in limbo because of a studio head leaving the company, funding falling through or a director passing on the project one to many times? Selling the script means nothing, heck selling the rights means nothing half the time. This is why they create the comics. The books work as a backup and a way to show the full version of the property.
Liberty Meadows got stuck in limbo so long the rights reverted to Cho and now he plans on holding onto them until the right proposal comes around. Powers was in limbo for years before FX filmed the pilot and it still may not get picked up. Locke and Key was filmed but not picked up by Fox. The sales never mean a feature film or TV show will be made.
Few creators can live on creator owned work alone, and those that do have managed to get really lucky. Robert Kirkman and Mark Millar spring to mind, and now both of them are actually in the business of making comics multimedia pitches. Millarworld is a breeding ground for films, as mentioned at the top of the article, and now has an actual multimedia componant. Kirkman has created Skybound as a brand under Image Comics to seek out and find books for TV and film. It’s in their about us section. “With SKYBOUND, Image COO Robert Kirkman will handpick up-and-coming creators and maintain an active role in promoting and expanding the projects of this already growing talent pool. Artist and imprint alike will be fully vested in the development of their properties into new mediums (e.g. television, film) globally.”
Skybound and Millarworld are just two examples of how mainstream comics have become. Creators used to just want to tell the best stories they could, now they have to consider the possibility of other media for the book when creating it.
Comics are no longer just books, they are platforms to new media, testing grounds for concepts and ideas, spec scripts with included concept art. The real reason people don’t skip this step is because you can’t. In order to make it you need time, luck and a little bit of support. Comics buy you all that, they get you readers, and when the rights are sold you get more interest in your book and with that more interest in a film/TV version.
The books support the films and the films support the books, much like a writer and an artist they exist in a symbiotic relationship to make the property the best it can be. And when it’s the best everyone wins. Creators have a strong property, readers have a book that continues and hollywood gets a hot new property for the summer film crowed and the fall TV season.
It’s now a mainstream comic industry with mainstream interests for the hollywood execs, readers are just along for the ride.