Elfquest, Wendy and Richard Pini’s cult comic series, is at last heading to the big screen, courtesy of Warner Bros. and Rawson Thurber.
Thurber (Dodgeball, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) will write, direct and produce the feature, whose format hasn’t been decided.
Published by the Pinis’ own WaRP Press beginning in 1978, Elfquest tells the story of Cutter, the young chief of a band of elves called the Wolfriders, who sets out to unite the scattered tribes of his pointy-eared people.
The original series, with its intense (for the time) depictions of warfare and sexuality, ended in 1984. Since then, Elfquest has been licensed by Marvel Comics and, more recently, DC Comics. Subsequent comics miniseries and prose novels have told more tales of the elfen clans.
Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to adapt Elfquest as an animated series or feature; ads for a multi-volume cartoon even appeared in the early ’90s.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:58 am
I hope we don’t get elves that look like angels…and fairies..
July 9th, 2008 at 9:34 am
WB can ok an Elfquest flick, but no WW, Flash or Green Lantern?
July 9th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Could be a real crossover success of a franchise if done properly.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Kevin Melrose: Mega Gear X’s noting the irony that Warner Bros. is developing a movie based on a comic book THEY DON’T OWN, yet they own DC Comics. If that’s not simple for you, I don’t know what to do.
July 9th, 2008 at 11:55 am
Ignoring the needlessly insulting tone … One is a high-fantasy property that can be marketed as in the vein of The Lord of the Rings or The Chronicles of Narnia. The others are fairly straightforward superhero concepts (all in various stages of development).
July 9th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
Works for me. I’ve been waiting for an Elfquest animated movie since, well, they FIRST announced it in the mid-’80s, along with Marvel’s announcement of an X-Men movie.
I just hope the movie doesn’t get watered down in favor of attempting to make a “family” film.
July 9th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Of course it is going to be watered down. There was a freakin’ orgy in it, with spouse swapping no less.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I am so excited for this. I’ve been looking forward to this since it was initially announced all those years ago. That said, it better not try for a PG-13 rating because I don’t think it can and stay true. If they treat this with respect it could be amazing.
July 9th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Actually, I should clarify. The director and writer really don’t inspire confidence in me
July 9th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
I’ll be happy to explain, Kev.:)
WB owns the pantheon of the most popular comic book characters in the world, yet go to another company’s characters instead. Instead of making attention-getting multi-million dollar blockbuster comic book flicks with famous characters that everyone and their mother is familiar with, they take an obscure comic from someone else.
Talk about no confidence in anything except Batman and Superman. WB execs seem to think that there isn’t anything in DC worth filming except for those two characters.
That’s what I’m lamenting. The WB HAS characters. They don’t need to go to Epic, or Acclaim or CrossGen to dig up characters. Instead of Elfquest, let’s see a WW adventure with lots of Greek monsters and gods that’s every bit of fantasy as LOTR. Or Aquaman. Hell, Adam Strange…
They don’t need Elfquest. They have this wonderful universe that they aren’t using.
July 9th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
But couldn’t you extend that line of thought to ask why Warner Bros. acquires most any film rights, or buys most any scripts, if it has the DC library?
July 9th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Finally!
It’s about time! This can be quite lucrative for WB so I hope they move forward with it properly.
Can’t wait!
PS. Like many others, I too have been waiting since the first announcment during the 80′s. Who says comic fans are impatient…!
July 9th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
They have the wrong guy handling this… Rawson Thurber is still on strike according to his website. >:-P
I turned Dodgeball off halfway through. What a piece of drivel.
They should get Kevin Monroe in on this one.
July 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
I’m talking about comics, which Elfquest is. It’s like passing up something widely popular and known to do something pretty obscure. It’s like WB making Mario Gully’s Ant when they could make The Flash.
It’s like they are afraid to do anything with their own characters.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Mega Gear: It’s not like they have to choose. They could do a Wonder Woman movie _and_ Elfquest if they wanted to. They’ve been ‘working’ to bring a lot of the JLA characters to the screen for some time. They’re in development hell at the moment. WB owns a lot of properties, DC is essentially just a small division of a much larger company. Without a Stan Lee or an Avi Arad to get in there and fight for these characters, they are going to be traded back and forth and caught up in red tape for a long time to come.
Watchmen only got moving when Zack Snyder got the necessary clout from the success of 300. Once he proved that he could deliver the goods he got enough respect to make the Watchmen movie we all want to see. The fans of DC who want to see movies of the JLA characters would be better off if Warner did not own DC. Marvel was free to start their own studio and now we’re seeing very faithful adaptations in the movies such as Iron Man and Hulk.
I guess what I’m saying is that WB is not all that concerned with what’s in the DC library. I don’t think they have any cohesive strategy for handling their DC properties. Wendy and Richard Peni have been working on getting Elfquest made for a looong time and they finally struck a deal with a movie company – that company happened to be WB.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:24 am
It’s not likely that WB has a certain set place on their slate for “comic book-based movies” and are knocking anything else off for this. They’ve got a director they likely want to work with (Dodgeball’s domestic gross was more than 5 times its production budget) and they’ve got a fantasy property with a reasonable library of adaptable material (at a time when the end of the WB’s lucrative Harry Potter franchise is in sight.) And with no script complete and no format set, it sounds like this thing is still in development rather than actually fully green lit.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:21 am
On the other hand, when you think about it, it could be a lot worse. We could have really gotten Justice League 90210. Still, I understand the problem. I think this might make more sense if DC did what Marvel did and create a division with the sole purpose of making the comic movies. Then you could have a specialized group working towards it, instead of a giant cooperation with little to no idea how to really move forward.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:03 am
I have collected every piece i could of these comics and autographed pieces thru the past 18ish years … i have been waiting for this moment for so long and hope this guy (who i know much of nothing about ) does justice to richard and wendy’s hard and honorable work.. i guess we will see.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:28 am
Very Nice! been waiting for this for as long as a lot of the other folks here. as for watering down? well thats an option for sure, but hey, if it introduces a new generation to this great series, thats an excellent thing. Still it doesn’t have to depict some of the more graphic content directly on screen and still be true to the material. Either way i think it’ll be good to finally see this happen (and personally i still want the animated
July 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
its about stories, most serial comics are harder to adapt to a single movie format, if they dont get a good ww or flash script, its silly to try and make another bad DC movie, I imagine they hare quite hesitant to push any more DC movies without a flawless script to avoid hurting the property more.
On the other hand, elfquest is a good story, and it has been around a long time, and is perhaps more popular than some people think. I know I am looking forward to this far more than I would be to wonder woman or the flash.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:03 am
Hard and honorable work?
Aside from their other moral lapses, hiring Barry Blair to write and draw Elfquest and publishing cheap editions directly from uninked sketches that even had big X’s on them to indicate where the spotting of the blacks should have been.
There has rarely been a property in the history of comics that has been so utterly mutilated for a buck by its own creators.
This movie hasn’t been greenlit, and I won’t miss whatever the heck they will do to the original story to make greenbacks on it.
The series has not aged well, and has nothing like the gravitas and epic quality of the work of Tolkien and Lewis.
July 10th, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Awesome. I’m thrilled for the Pinis and I really hope this film is done right. ElfQuest is still one of my all time favorite comic series– to see a faithful big screen adaption would be a dream come true.
July 17th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
I can’t wait for this movie! I have been a fan since I was 5 years old. I love the Elfquest comics!!! They picked this director because he is a big fan of Elfquest so hopefully he will do it right.
March 18th, 2009 at 10:18 pm
This has a better chance of being greenlit than one might think, simply because of the vomit-inducing multicultural/multiracial malarky built into it from the ground up.