Dave McKean Adds A Movie Of Cages To His To Do List

There's only one Dave McKean feature film out there in the world so far, and that's Mirrormask. Doesn't seem right that such an auspicious debut wouldn't have been followed up more rapidly, or even very regularly. I feel hard done by.

I reported earlier in the year on McKean's continuing attempts to get ass-kicking kitty picture Varjak Paw off of the ground. Now it seems he's also taking meetings about an eventual big screen rendering of his epic, ambitious Cages comic book.

Great first meeting about Cages film; a long term possibility, but good to know all interested parties are on the same page.

Cages is rather widely considered to be McKean's masterwork. Like Varjak Paw it hinges on the comings and goings of a cat, but the similarities pretty much dry up right there. Originally serialised through the first half of the '90s, it really came into focus for me when collected as a single volume in '98. I guess it didn't help that the early pages, while looking astonishing, read rather badly.

At least those awkward opening scenes gives McKean something to fix in the mix when bringing the story over to the cinema, amidst the more major travails of something so perfectly attuned to one medium work as well in another.

The book's narrative, or more properly narratives, resist easy summary because each episode concludes rather swiftly, making it hard to describe them without spoiling too much. We have angels and housewives, painters and writers, all in their own stories taking place in the same building and linked together pretty much only by a wandering black cat.

I can't see a Cages film being big box office, and neither can I see it being big budget. I'm sure, however, that it would be rather high quality.

Besides being a source of news about the man and his work, McKean's Twitter feed is also a rather fun source of film criticism. I think he pretty much nailed The Invention of Lying, and I was not surprised to see him giving some love to The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.