I am – Hercules!!
Warren Ellis, the world’s best comic-book author not named Alan Moore, is writing a half-hour pilot for a “black comedy/science fiction” show for AMC.
(To anticipate the question in talkback; no, I didn’t mean ABC; and no, I’m not certain AMC still stands for “American Movie Classics.”)
“I'm not allowed to reveal the title or premise right now,” Ellis told AICN: Coaxial News. “I can talk around it, but they were definite on me keeping those two things to myself for now.”
It is NOT based on any of his print work. “I can confirm that. This is a project I originated for television.”
“As with all TV Things, everything could go horribly wrong,” Ellis writes in his Bad Signal (his email-news thingie) “But this is the deal I've been waiting for, with people who understand the project and format I want to work in. And you know something's going right when people in TV are telling you to go more experimental and take more risks. This isn't your US network tv experience.
“I'm writing the pilot at the moment. (And I should particularly thank Joss Whedon and John Rogers for their insights into the process.) More details will hopefully follow as the project progresses. Or, you know, a tearstained screed if it doesn't.”
This should have happened five years ago. If Ellis lived in Los Angeles instead of the United Kingdom it would have happened 10 years ago. For better than a decade Ellis has been cranking out lorryloads of popular and critically acclaimed graphic novels, including “Global Frequency” (itself made into a TV pilot Ellis did not write), “The Authority,” “Planetary,” “Blackgas,” “Ministry of Space,” “Strange Killings” … the list of brilliance goes on and on and ON ...
