This is one of the consequences, very largely foreseeable, of the advent of streaming platforms. To attract more subscribers, the new giants must always provide more fiction, while being aware that the creativity of Hollywood screenwriters is not, far from it, without limit.
Therefore, the obvious solution is to do what the major studios have been doing for ages, namely creating Marvel-like franchises and updating any production likely to arouse interest. Even if it was a flop at the time.
This is why, to everyone’s surprise, Twentieth Century Studios (ex-Fox), decided to tackle the reboot of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a big disappointment in 2003 that convinced neither the critics nor the public (179 million $ in receipts for a budget of 78 million $ excluding promotional costs: this is insufficient to cover its costs). Nor even its main actor: following playing Allan Quatermain, Sean Connery had simply decided to retire, announcing that “the idiots are now in Hollywood”.
But now, in nineteen years, things have changed a lot. The Avengers showed the full potential of superhero reunions, and Disney, who got their hands on the studio and its movie rights, felt it was time to revisit the concept of this reunion of classic literary heroes. . By getting much closer to the comic strip of Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, which opposed, in the middle of the Victorian era, the adventurer Allan Quatermain, the vampire Mina Murray, Captain Nemo, Dr Jekyll (and Mister Hyde, necessarily) as well as Griffin (the invisible man) to opponents as formidable as Fu Manchu, Moriarty or the alien invaders of War of the Worlds.
The refresh mission was entrusted to Justin Haythe, the screenwriter of Red Sparrow, Lone Ranger ou Revolutionnary Road. Honestly, we know of more reassuring filmographies than this, but if he manages to keep the darkness and the cynicism of the original work, then all hopes are allowed.
