League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen reboot will focus on female characters

It's no surprise that The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen is getting a reboot considering just how popular superhero movies and comic book adaptations are these days. It has been reported that 20th Century Fox are not just keen to re-adapt the failure that was the 2003 film starring Sean Connery, but also offer up a whole new angle than what was initially presented by making the plot completely female-centric.

Talking to Collider about the project at the TCA's, Fox producer John Davis explained their ideas on where to take the movie: "By going back to the roots and making it authentic, that's what the fans have been looking forward to. It's female-focused, which I find interesting. I think Mad Max was great. I guess you can always find new ways to do something, and go back to the roots. What is it that made them love the property in the first place?"

Rooted in graphic novels rather than lighter comic books, Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's Extraordinary Gentlemen focuses on the darker aspects of its world-saving heroes consisting of Victorian-era literary characters Allan Quatermain (from the novel King Solomon's Mines), Dorian Gray, The Invisible Man, Captain Nemo (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea), Tom Sawyer and Dr. Jekyll (and Mr. Hyde) who team up to fight all types of villain.

Whilst it sounds interesting, it seems quite bizarre that the studio are so keen to concentrate heavily on the women in the stories as there aren't that many female characters. However, if they're applying the Mad Max approach then they'd really only need one stand-out woman (Imperator Furiosa-style) to pull this idea off. Good job too, as there is only one woman who features in the stories and that's Mina Murray, a character lifted from Bram Stoker's Gothic horror novel Dracula.

Deviating from her storyline in the 1897 novel, Mina's abilities come from her being a vampire, which could be enough of a plot-line to warrant her being at the forefront of a more female-based movie. In the graphic novels, Mina is the one who assembles The League together under MI5 agent Campion Bond - something that was altered for the 2003 movie, so this might also be a way to make her a predominant character.

The original film which starred Shane West and Jason Flemyng as well as Connery was not received well amongst fans upon its release due to its unfaithfulness to the graphic novels and even though it was planned as a franchise, didn't make any sequels. So it's understandable that filmmakers at Fox believe that taking it in a whole new direction will give it more chance at success. Something that will remain consistent from the first movie however is the idea that the heroes "are rogues" and that it upkeeps the concept that "you can't save the world with conventional people when unconventional things are happening."