Ron Howard and Brian Grazer‘s Imagine Entertainment, as well as Barry Levine and Radical Pictures are joining forces to develop a new movie based on the graphic novel Legends: The Enchanted.

The Radical Publishing comic (read our review here!) is created, written, and drawn by Nick Percival. Legends tells a dark and sometimes gruesome fairy tale story, using many of the familiar characters we’ve known all of our lives. Just to give you an idea, some of these characters you’ll find include Red Riding Hood (known here as simply Red Hood), a dangerous wolf-hunter; Jack, a slayer of giants; a deadly mercenary called Goldilocks; and even two psychic exterminators known as Hansel and Gretel.

The comic is still brand new itself, but the content has clearly made enough of an impact to inspire this new cinematic re-invention. The concept of popular fairly tales given very mature and dark makeovers is so appealing because it opens up great new creative doors. The list of projects like this seems to grow longer each and every day with Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and other projects in development.

Reading about Legends: The Enchanters will surely lead you to immediately think of Bill Willingham’s fantastic graphic novel series, Fables, but worry not — as you read in the above-review, these two are very different tales using the same basic concept.

If Legends turns out to be anywhere near as good as Fables is, then we the fans are the beneficiaries. This is the kind of subject matter that will become an amazing movie some day, so long as it’s handled properly.

[Source: Heat Vision]