Imagine Entertainment Developing Fairy Tale Thriller 'Legends'

OK, here's a great idea. We're going to take The Brothers Grimm and mash it up with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. You know, have 'dark fantasy' versions of Red Riding Hood, Jack the Giant Killer and Hansel and Gretel teaming up to solve a murder mystery. Who says there is no longer any reverence for the true good stories?

Legends: The Enchanted sounds like an expansion pack for Magic: The Gathering, but it is also a graphic novel by Nick Percival and now, possibly, a film from Brian Grazer and Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment.

Imagine is starting development on a film based on the graphic novel. There's no writer or studio at this point. THR explains that the story kicks into gear when " the remains of Pinocchio are discovered. Red Hood, now a noted wolf hunter, and Jack partner to discover who is murdering the creatures of folklore. Along the way, they are assisted by characters such as Goldilocks, re-imagined as a mercenary, and Hansel & Gretel, now psychic exterminators."

I can't be the only one that feels some serious reinvention fatigue when faced with this. I feel something a lot deeper than fatigue when reading about this particular story, actually, but I'm trying to be polite.

Watch the trailer for the graphic novel (embedded below, complete with the rock tune that scored the second Wolf Man trailer) and you'll see that 'dark fantasy' barely begins to cover it. There's steampunk, touches of the fantasy worlds of Games Workshop titles like Warhammer, visual elements from artists like Steve Bissette and Rick Veitch, and a whole lot of attitude.

The saving grace here is that, with films like Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer and Catherine Hardwicke's The Girl with the Red Riding Hood coming down the pipe pretty soon, this could well end up not ever being made.