You’ll recall goth rocker Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance — who recently butchered the shit out of a Bob Dylan cover for “Watchmen” — wrote a graphic novel called, “The Umbrella Academy,” that has Hollywood interested.
Shooting for the stars and a little naive, Way told the L.A. Times a few months ago, he wanted people like director Alfonso Cuarón (“Children of Men”), screenwriter Diablo Cody, Michel Gondry and or even Wes Anderson to work on his cinematic graphic novel adaptation.
Unfortunately, Way thought his goth-cheese sensibilities were too much like Anderson’s. “I think [Anderson’s] too close to home. It’s too much to the source, unfortunately for me. I think he would read it and think, ‘I think I’ve covered this ground already.'” Uhhhh…mmkay.
Cuarón recently said he’s not attached (and doesn’t sound like he’s ever going to be), so where does that leave the My Chem frontman? How about directing it himself?
According to Kerrang!, that’s actually a possibility. “There’s been a lot of progress on it. Things in Hollywood move slow typically, but the comic was optioned as a film right before the San Diego Comic Convention last July. As soon as I got home from that I started meeting people at Universal and the film got fast-tracked and so recently I’ve been talking to them about three times a week, first talking about the tone the film might have and then talking about screen writers who are going to work very closely with me when it comes time to do the film.”
Way also hints that what he’d really love to do is direct. “Directing is something I’d be really interested in. People ask me if I would act, but acting to me is not nearly as exciting as directing would be. When I was talking to Mark Webb about the ‘Ghost Of You’ video I was talking about the idea and I broke it down into shots and he’d said ‘You should really consider making your own videos eventually.’ And I think that making videos would be fun and easy, but I’d definitely be interested in directing features. After this record cycle I’d be really interested in trying something like that.”
Gerard is this your passive aggressive way to tell Universal what you really want?