The planned live-action Gargoyles reboot from James Wan’s Atomic Monster is officially dead.
And yeah, I’m genuinely bummed about this one.
Wan seemed like a pretty damn good choice to bring Gargoyles into live action. This is the guy behind Saw, Insidiousand The Conjuring, produced M3GAN, and somehow turned Aquaman into a $1.15 BILLION movie. Give him gothic castles, ancient creatures, New York City at night and a mythology filled with monsters?
Come on. I wanted to see that.
Unfortunately, Gargoyles creator Greg Weisman confirmed at Fan Expo Chicago that Atomic Monster’s Disney+ project is no longer moving forward.
“Atomic Monster had the license to develop a live-action Gargoyles for Disney+, and that’s dead.”
Ouch.
For anyone who didn’t grow up with it, Gargoyles was one of those shows that had absolutely no business being as good as it was. It debuted in 1994 and gave us these ancient Scottish gargoyles who awaken in modern-day Manhattan after being frozen in stone for a thousand years.
But this wasn’t just another Saturday morning cartoon designed to sell toys.
It had Shakespeare. Betrayal. Revenge. mythology. surprisingly complicated characters. And Keith David giving Goliath one of the greatest voices ever put into an animated series.
Seriously, Gargoyles was DARK.
That’s exactly why the idea of James Wan getting his hands on it was so intriguing. Done correctly, this could have been something closer to a gothic fantasy epic than another shiny Disney remake.
Now? Apparently we’re getting nothing.
Weisman says he doesn’t know whether Disney has any plans to revive Gargoyles in animation, but as far as the live-action project goes, it’s over.
And I’m disappointed.
Disney has an incredible property sitting on the shelf with characters people still love more than 30 years later, a huge mythology already built around it, and a premise practically begging for a big-budget adaptation.
Meanwhile, we’re probably six months away from somebody announcing a live-action remake of Home on the Range.
Justice for Goliath, goddammit.
