The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was based on an acclaimed series by legendary comic book scribe Alan Moore. It starred Sean Connery, one of the biggest movie stars in the world and was directed by the guy who launched the Blade series. In the days before Marvel made superheroes a dominant force at the box office, The League seemed like a safe bet for a profitable film series. Instead, it sent its star and director into retirement.

Pre-MCU

Try to remember a time before the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Before Iron Man and the Avengers made comic book heroes mainstream entertainment. Hollywood studios knew there was money to be made in adapting comic books to the big screen. But they hadn’t quite figured out the formula.

Following the success of Batman for examples, studio heads green-lit a bunch of movies featuring pulp heroes they assumed audiences would flock to see. But it turns out The Shadow and The Phantom didn’t have the same appeal as The Dark Knight.

In the early 21st century, there were signs of the Marvel tsunami to come. The X-men and Spider-man were starring in hit movie franchises. This started a frenzy that would result in movies featuring the Punisher, Ghost Rider, Daredevil and the Fantastic Four. While some of those movies did okay box office, they proved that Marvel didn’t guarantee box office success.

Marvel wasn’t the only comic book publisher in town. But their main rival, DC Comics, was owned by Warner Brothers. The rights to Superman and Batman weren’t for sale. So studios looking for an alternative to Marvel turned to other comics for inspiration. Audiences may not have realized that movies like Ghost World and The Road to Perdition were based on comic books, but they were.

Comic Book Origin Story

One such comic book was The League of Extraordinary Gentleman which was written by Alan Moore. Moore is a comic book superstar. He’s responsible for several classic stories including The Watchmen. By this point in his career, Moore was at odds with both major comic book publishers. He felt both DC and Marvel had done him wrong and he vowed never to work for either one again.

In 1999, Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill created The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for Wildstorm Comics (which was eventually bought by DC). The book re-imagined characters from the Victorian era as kind of a proto-Justice League. The cast included Mina Murray, Allan Quatermain, Captain Nemo, Mr. Hyde and the invisible man.

The book was steeped in literary references. It was dark, cheeky and very, very British. In short, it wasn’t the sort of thing that would translate well into a big-budget Hollywood movie. But 20th Century Fox decided to give it a try anyway.

The Studio Treatment

Producer Don Murphy bought the rights to two Alan Moore stories. From Hell made The League look like the Super-Friends by comparison. So it’s probably not surprising that Murphy was more excited about adapting the latter. Murphy got right to work developing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen before the source material had even been published.

You can give Murphy credit for realizing that the League was not like other properties. He wanted to leave as much of the British spirit in tact as Fox would allow. To that end, he hired British comic book scribe James Robinson to write the script.

Robinson had was best known for the extremely British Starman series published by DC Comics in the nineties. He’d also written the scripts for a few low-budget movies. Robinson was a pretty big deal in the world of comics, but as a screenwriter he was a novice. Fox began giving him notes early on which included relocating the movie to America.

Pre-9/11, the plot of the movie would have seen the heroes traveling to turn-of-the-century New York to prevent the release of a flesh-eating virus. That was changed for obvious reasons.

With the setting changed to Venice, Fox insisted on Americanizing the movie some other way. Tom Sawyer was added to the League in an effort to appeal to American audiences. According to Robinson, “I think 20th Century Fox felt more comfortable making a movie that was very expensive knowing that there was a young American character.”

Assembling the League

Murphy’s pick to direct The League was English director Stephen Norrington. On paper, that makes perfect sense. Murphy wanted to keep things British despite the Mark Twain infusion. Norrington was a Brit and his previous film was the first movie in the Blade series. That seemed like relevant experience to launch a comics-based film franchise.

Unfortunately, Norrington would soon be in over his head. The budget for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was nearly twice what it cost to make Blade. Reports from the set indicated that the director moved slowly which angered the movie’s leading man.

The leading man in question was none other than the original James Bond, Sean Connery. Kevin O’Neill claimed he based his interpretation of the aged Allan Quatermain on Connery, so Norrington recruited him for the role. Under normal circumstances, Connery wouldn’t have been interested. But it turns out the actor was questioning his own instincts.

In recent years, Connery had passed on the opportunities to play Morpheus in The Matrix and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings because, he said, he didn’t understand them at all. Both parts would have been lucrative for Connery. It was estimated that passing on Gandalf cost Connery around $450 million dollars. He wasn’t eager to repeat that mistake so he decided to accept the offer to play Allan Quatermain in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

As part of the deal, Connery was given a producer credit. With that came creative control. In the comics, Quatermain was portrayed as an opium addict. Connery balked and that aspect of the character was written out of the movie. Even without the producer credit, Connery had a lot of power on the set. His $17 million dollar paycheck represented a large chunk of the movie’s budget.

Calamity Ensues

Shooting got off to a rocky start when Europe was flooded by a historically nasty storm. The deluge was said to be the worst in one hundred years. The damage to the set cost around $7 million dollars. In a sign of things to come, Nemo’s sub sank. Connery fled his suite at the Four Seasons with nothing but his golf clubs.

Filming halted for two weeks while the sets were rebuilt in Malta. Norrington asked Fox for more time to complete the movie, but Fox was determined to make its release date. The director had no choice but to pick up the pace.

Under the best of circumstances, it’s unlikely Norrington and Connery would have worked well together. Norrington was a relatively inexperienced director who was figuring things out as he went along. Even his crew grew frustrated with his lack of preparation. Connery was a 72-year old mega star looking for a quick and easy paycheck on his way to retirement.

Connery and Norrington butted heads. “On the first day I realized he was insane,” Connery said of his director. Reportedly, the relationship was so rocky that Norrington asked his leading man if he wanted to punch him in the face. Connery declined the offer, but tensions continued to escalate.

Racing to Retirement

Facing a tight deadline, Norrington opted out of a lot of post-production on League. There were rumors that Connery had the director barred from the editing room, but those rumors were largely discredited. Norrington appears to have largely removed himself for unspecified reasons. He clearly wasn’t overly invested in the movie.

In fact, the director was a no-show at the movie’s premiere. When a reporter asked Connery where Norrington was, the actor replied, “Check the local asylum.” Once he had completed his promotional obligations for League, Connery promptly retired. “The experience had a great influence on me, it made me think about showbiz. I get fed up dealing with idiots.”

Norrington also went into semi-retirement. He initially sent out letters to several producers he had plans to work with to notify them that he was done working in Hollywood. Years later, he flirted with the idea of returning but nothing ever came from those projects.

Disbanding the League

Meanwhile, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen faced an uphill battle. The summer release date that Fox had insisted upon put the movie head-to-head with Disney’s first Pirates of the Caribbean. League opened in second place with a so-so $23 million dollars. But Pirates sailed away with $70 million in first place.

Once word of mouth spread, The League sank like a stone… or Nemo’s sub. Amid dreary reviews, the movie failed to recoup its production costs domestically. Ironically, it fared better overseas. Apparently Tom Sawyer wasn’t enough to lure in the Americans after all.

With weak ticket sales and a retired leading man, plans for sequels were scrapped. But that wasn’t the end of the problems for The League. A lawsuit was filed against 20th Century Fox claiming that the movie plagiarized a script with a similar concept.

The lawsuit was settled out of court which infuriated comic book creator Alan Moore. He viewed the suit as a personal slight and wanted the chance to clear his name in court. Moore was already unhappy with the comics industry, but his experience with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen put him off Hollywood as well.

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