Though the studio really missed a trick by not announcing this news on November 5, Variety (via ComicBookMovie.com) is reporting that a serialized take on one of Alan Moore's most celebrated works, V For Vendetta, is in development at HBO.
BAFTA Award-nominated Somewhere Boy writer Pete Jackson is attached to pen the series, with DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran on board as executive producers, along with Ben Stephenson via Poison Pen and Leanne Klein of Wall to Wall Media, which is part of Warner Bros. Television Studios UK. Warner Bros. Television will produce.
Moore's 1982 tale is set in a dystopian Britain controlled by the fascistic Norsefire party. An anarchist named V, inspired by the infamous revolutionary Guy Fawkes, attempts to take down the government with the help of a young woman named Evey Hammond.
Here's what Moore had to say about the origin of his idea for V during a 2000 interview.
"When we started to do V, the entirety of the original idea was that we would have a dark, romantic, noirish adventurer and then we thought we’d set him in the future and then the details slowly came together and yeah, somewhere out of this we realized we were doing something about the contrast between anarchy and fascism, that there were lots of moral questions being asked and that yes, it was very much centred upon the world of ideas as being in some ways more important than the material world, which is I think a notion which has probably born fruit recently in other areas of my work, where it’s still something that I’m very much involved with, that notion, that ideas are more important, if anything, than the material."
The graphic novel was previously adapted as a 2005 movie starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman. It was generally well received and proved to be a moderate box office success (it was a much bigger hit on DVD), but many fans of the far more complex comic series felt it missed the mark.
Back in 2017, Channel 4 planned a series adaptation that never got off the ground. According to Variety, The HBO Max/Epix DC series Pennyworth "was also meant to serve as a prequel to V for Vendetta, though it was canceled after three seasons before that storyline could be fully fleshed out."
We're not sure if the new V for Vendetta show will be a direct retelling of the comic, but HBO's acclaimed Watchmen series served as a sequel to Moore's story, and there's already speculation that this could follow suit.
What do you make of this news? Do you think it's time for another take on V for Vendetta? Drop us a comment down below.
"Following world war, London is a police state occupied by a fascist government, and a vigilante known only as V (Hugo Weaving) uses terrorist tactics to fight the oppressors of the world in which he now lives. When V saves a young woman named Evey (Natalie Portman) from the secret police, he discovers an ally in his fight against England's oppressors."