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.

Legends: The Enchanted #0
Written and illustrated by Nick Percival
Letters by Richard Starking & Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt
Radical Publishing
28 pages; full-color
Price $1; Release date: February 3, 2010

When giants lay siege on the town of Krakenfield, the townsfolk need a hero and the drifter Jack is just their man. Jack knows a thing or two about killing giants, even though the gigs are getting tiresome for him. On the edge of the Bionic Woods, a bound and imprisoned Pinocchio suffers at the hands of a hag threatening to kill the puppet at the behest of a squire. Days later in those same woods, a mysterious young women caped and hooded all in red carrying a basket, collecting something important is attacked by a pack of wolves.

Something about this tale sounds familiar, yes? That’s because the characters are made up of classic fairy tale legends. But before you dismiss this as a child’s bedtime story, let me stress that Legends: The Enchanted is graphically violent with art that looks like Todd McFarlane’s Twisted Fairy Tales figures meets H.R. Giger in a Clive Barker horror story.