Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Alan Moore, Comics, entertainment, michael uslan, swamp thing

The Contract That Gutted Alan Moore's Swamp Thing

This is the famous "sex" scene by Alan Moore and Steve Bissette for Swamp Thing.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NefuBEZPyk[/youtube]

And this is how it was portrayed in the movie Return Of Swamp Thing. You can see why Alan Moore might have told Bill Baker

"ever since I started to do work that attracted interest from the film industry, which was pretty close to the beginning of my career, actually, I had taken a rather dim view of it. Possibly because my first exposure to having my work filmed was when they made the regrettable Return of the Swamp Thing which, due to the perhaps unwise contract that DC had signed with the producers of The Swamp Thing movie, back when DC were desperate to get any of their books filmed, the contract stated that the filmmakers were at liberty to take anything from The Swamp Thing title, from any point during the book's past or future. That was why the second Swamp Thing film featured ideas and lines of butchered dialogue that had been taken from my comparatively thoughtful comics, making them travesties of my work, basically, which I wasn't too happy about."

"…as it turns out, the Constantine movie was made under that same open-ended deal that The Swamp Thing film had been made under. Constantine was a character that appeared in Swamp Thing, so, therefore, the filmmakers had got the right to make a movie of it, and use any of the materials they wanted."

Well Daniel Best has managed to find the contract signed between DC Comics and Michael Uslan for his company Swampfilms,  set up for the express purpose of exploiting Swamp Thing across media, noting how it pretty much lets them do anything, for 2.5% of the movie budget.

And looking at the Swamp Thing films, I don't think they paid much, do you?

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!