The Pitch: Warren Ellis’s Fell Is Modern Day Sherlock With a Violent Noir Vibe Worthy of An On-Screen Adaptation
Around 4 months ago I was trolling my local comic book store looking for something cool to read that was different but fit my tastes for something edgy, dark and mysterious. My comic book clerk friend recommended Warren Ellis’ Fell. Described as a detective story this series would make for a great film series but an even better television series.
For those of you unaware of how this column works, The Pitch finds a remake or what we think is an “unknown” that would translate well on-screen as a television project and/or feature film project. I just analyze the story and create the pitch for Hollywood giving them free ideas. Sure it sounds crazy but you never know one day a studio may come knocking on the Fused Film door.
Back to Fell, because of Warren Ellis’ self contained story each issue feeling episodic, naturally a translation to the television screen would seem the easiest but albeit best first route for this adaptation. I love noir and HBO is sort comedically toying with that style in their series Bored to Death, so why not have Fell as the alternative right? True BLood is sort of a vampire noir so this could fit right in with that type of programming, ABC is developing the comic book series Fables, Fell could fit into that programming as well.
The noir style of the series comes from its setting Snowtown and Ben Templesmith’s artwork creates a hazy outline that accompanies the immoral haze of a decaying city like this fiction place making it a wonderful and fairly cheap backdrop for this type of series idea not mention awesomely mysterious.
Snowtown, whose location is never specified in the book, is a city whose conditions are somewhere between the “urban decay of America’s worst inner cities” and “the poverty of a third-world country.” Making it a breeding ground for a lot of violent and creepy type stuff going on, such as: citizenry taken to spraypainting giant S’s that have been crossed out as a form of protective magic, in the hopes that Snowtown will not harm what has been labelled as its own. Described at one point as a “feral city” – the title of the first issues – its denizens are generally desperate, hostile, or both. Violence is commonplace, and whole chunks of the city are without proper utilities leading to really bad conditions.
The series main character, Richard Fell, arrives in the city as a way of starting all over again. In a place where nothing seems to make any sense, Fell clings to the one thing he knows to be true: everybody’s hiding something, including himself. Fell is determined to do all he can to better the city in many ways. He takes calls on his time off, he ignores the lack of having a warrant for the sake of a little girl and he pushes through efforts to hire more precinct employees. He is noted by his powers of observation and deduction (a salute to Sherlock Holmes) and his ever-present digital camera.
The series is mysterious and packaged right, each episode can make for compelling, dark television that allows for interesting development of characters, something every network is looking for these days. JJ Abrams was once quoted as saying “We’re smack dab in the middle of the Age of Immediacy” and I do not think anyone would disagree with him, blackberries, iPhones, blogs, internet all make for instant gratification but one thing is for sure with some of the most successful and compelling dramas on television it is that antithesis to immediacy. Lost and The Wire are two shows that have successfully been able to tap that type of potential. I think Fell can do that as well.
Story settings have become equally important characters to shows as the actual people that inhabit it, Fell is nothing short of that too. Though its no mysterious Island, Snowtown is not without its share of mysteries, including its location, which is near a body of water somewhere and thats it, all we know.
So outlining the setting and style of the series tells you a lot but the series name is Fell and that means the main character has to be someone audiences will find compelling and interesting. I mentioned Richard Fell, is a detective who has been transferred to the decaying city, just as mysterious as the city itself, so is his background making for some great storytelling along the way. All we know at this point is that it has to do with an injured partner with recurring memory loss.
The series is great and would make for very well done and interesting TV given the right production team behind it and certainly the blessing of its creator Ellis. I’d love to see someone like Alan Ball or Eric Kripke get behind this series and usher its development. For the character of Fell I haven’t given much thought to who’d play him the best so I’ll leave that open ended right now.
In the feature film arena the development, in my opinion, would need to be similar though it needs to be handled differently because you have 2 and half hours versus an episodic 45 minute show plus you may not get a sequel, hence why I said earlier this would make better TV than film. A film version would need to combine a few issues into one story in order to make it work plus Alfonso Cuaron would be ideal as a director for a film version.
So where is the problem with Fell right now? Well first off, the series is on-going, its hard to adapt something right when the end-game is not known, though that hasn’t stopped anyone before. Other issue is the series suffers from scheduling problems due to Warren Ellis’ computer, which contained several future Fell scripts along with his backups, dying in late 2008, so Ellis is currently in the process of recreating them. Publishing will continue once he feels he has a sufficient number of scripts written.
Links from Around the Web:
Categories: Features
