Gaiman on Moore and Constantine

[Krug]

From Neil Gaiman's blog, where he comments about the movie Constantine based on Hellblazer.

Oh, it's true that Alan's rejected the money for CONSTANTINE and assigned it to his cocreators, but he's now done that for all films of his and things he's done that might one day be filmed. This was because he was deeply hurt and offended and irritated by being accused in the Larry Cohen lawsuit of having written League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as some kind of studio shill, and because Alan never does anything by halves. Up until the lawsuit his position was that he didn't care about the films people made from his work, but was happy to cash the cheques; after, he decided that he didn't even want to cash the cheques. His share of Constantine was redistributed among his co-creators, John Totleben, Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch and to Jamie Delano and John Ridgway.

As far as I know, from having spoken to him, Alan's view on Constantine itself is the same as his view on From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which is that he'll probably rent the DVD one day, you never know, hell might freeze over, -- and that the important work is the comic -- the main difference being here that the film is, from what I understand, mostly based on the Garth Ennis and Jamie Delano issues of the Hellblazer comic.

(And, for whatever remains of the record, Alan hasn't seen anything of Constantine -- no scripts, no nothing. Nor has he had any contact with DC on it except for asking Karen Berger to redistribute the money and the credit.)

I tend to feel that the filmmakers started with two strikes against them, simply by casting Keanu Reeves instead of, say, Jude Law, but everything I've heard since has been encouraging, so while I'll be sitting in the cinema with my arms folded and an "okay, convince me" attitude, I'll at least be going to see it."

 

[morrolan]

Good for Alan. I am sort of in the camp that says the comic is the core work, and the film is frippery; frippery that in a perfect world would successfully reinterprate the comic into a new medium.

But after seeing the travesty that was LEG, I gotta say I'm glad that Moore is divorcing himself from them completely. I wouldn't blame him for cashing the cheque, Those are (partly) his intellectual properties. But I'm glad he's making the stand.

Ob. pimpage: If you like Hellblazer, you might enjoy playing Blood Will Tell, my impending d20 modern pbp.