Wendy Pini posted to Facebook:After close to four years of suspense – and longer than four years of your much-appreciated interest and support – the word has come down from Warner Bros. And the word is “no.” Their simple explanation is that they don’t want to compete with The Hobbit. This was a possibility, among several, that we were prepared for. It is a relief, at last, to know.

R-rated fantasy with sexy feral elves?  Hmmm.  Sounds awesome.  Also does not sound mainstream…

I love the book collecting all her Elric sketches, even long after I stopped reading Elfquest.

I’ll have to take a look– especially since they’re online, now.  It wouldn’t be the first time I foolishly dismissed something awesome in my youth.

But with a story that complex and with those kind of adult themes, there’s no way in hell it would survive in the complex form the we came to know it in. Mind-melding space-elves having orgies? Hah hah!

Hollywood execs just want a huge initial hit out of a multi-episode series. But they keep bungling the launch so goddamn badly that it kills things off before they even get started. Examples: Golden Compass, Lemony Snicket, Percy Jackson, C.S. Lewis, Disney rides, endless superhero reboots…  
Not many franchises mange to secure someone like Peter Jackson or Benicio del Toro who respect the script and the story enough to make it solid. The code so far is just “acquire rights + film + add a shitload of CGI = PROFIT” 

Assuming the movie ever got greenlit, it just seems like a ripe source of scorn for diehard fans who hate the sanitized version and newcomers who just think it’s a shitty movie about space elves. But as you say, it’s their prerogative to drive their franchise off a cliff – George Lucas didn’t have a problem doing it.

You can read all the Elf Quest books online – the creators put them all up there. I confess I had next to zero interest reading them back when I collected comics. But I stumbled on the site one day and decided to read the first book. 3 days later and near zero work done, I read the whole first story arch. It was good. I really liked it.

However – other than both have elves and take place on a planet – IT IS NOTHING LIKE THE HOBBIT. Jesus, pull your heads out of your asses. Go ahead, give more money to Michael Bay.

Wait – I got it. They are fighting  piracy by making shit that is so bad, no one wants to download it. BRILLIANT!

Edit: Proof http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/9682711.stm

I thought SG-U was trying too hard to be “edgy” like BSG. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t much like it, but that was one of the complaints I saw about it. Stargate had always been campy, even the first movie, and SG-U ditched that for grit. I loved it (well, there was Elyse Levesque and her acting) but I guess I was in a minority.

The excuse made by WB sounds lame.  It seems like every third movie right now is either a vampire movie or a zombie movie.  The number of “steampunk” movies is beginning to ratchet up a bit, too.  Please, Hollywood, don’t run that into the ground; the fanbase already did that.

I like and respect Wendy and Richard Pini and have talked with them quite a bit in the past.  They are truly great people.  I have a lot of their earliest works in the Elfquest world, but am not what you would call a diehard fan. Still, it would be a shame to see the movie done badly.  Some of us are still recovering from Ralph Bakshi’s Tolkien efforts.