Alan Moore, the legendary writer of comic books like Watchmen, V for Vendetta, From Hell, and Batman: The Killing Joke, has made little secret of his disdain for adaptations of his work in the past. But in a new interview, he’s gone so far as to say that he doesn't even wish for his share of the profits to be given to the creatives of future adaptations.
While Moore can’t control whether or not his comics are adapted for film and TV, it’s been said that he’s refused the money he’s entitled to by the studios, asking it to be divvied up among the adaptations’ writers and other creatives. When asked about that in an interview published today by The Telegraph, Moore said he “no longer wish it to even be shared with them.”
“I don’t really feel, with the recent films, that they have stood by what I assumed were their original principles,” he said. “So I asked for DC Comics to send all of the money from any future TV series or films to Black Lives Matter.”
Moore went on to talk about how he’s not too interested in money anyway, living a quiet life in Northampton. He’s become less and less visible in the public eye as well.
“I’ve become used to a more virtual world,” he told the Telegraph. “And I’ve kind of forgone public appearances, partly because I’m a bit old and doddery – and, as I get older, as you can see I get more unsightly – but also I was finding at comic conventions I’d talk to people and they were looking at me like they were having some sort of religious experience rather than an ordinary conversation. So I’ve sort of retired into what I probably originally thought a writer’s life was like, where you sit at home and write books.”
The books he’s currently writing are a set of fantasy novels that he said are less Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and more Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy, “which is actually about the real world in some ways, the changing nature of British society." He also doubled down on the fact that he’s officially retired from comics.
“Now they’re called ‘graphic novels’, which sounds sophisticated and you can charge a lot more for them,” he added. “What appealed to me most about comics is no more, and these innocent and inventive and imaginative superhero characters from the Forties, Fifties, Sixties are being recycled to a modern audience as if they were adult fare.”
Moore has, of course, famously hated all adaptations of his work, including HBO’s Watchmen, Zack Snyder’s film version of Watchmen, and 2006’s dystopian action movie V for Vendetta. Generally, he thinks superhero movies have “blighted cinema.”
“I would be the last person to want to sit through any adaptations of my work,” Moore said in a 2022 interview with GQ. “From what I’ve heard of them, it would be enormously punishing. It would be torturous, and for no very good reason.”
Thumbnail credit: Nick Pickles/WireImage
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she's not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
