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Here's Why DC Won't Animate Kingdom Come


When DC started animating well-known comic book stories, the one story everyone wanted to see was Mark Waid and Alex Ross' Kingdom Come. The beautiful storyline is set in a dark future where Superman decides to come out of retirement and try saving the world again. It's one of DC's best tales and fans have been wanting to see it get the animated treatment for some time.

Judging from Bruce Timm's comments, however, it looks like we'll never see it happen.

During the 10-year anniversary panel of DC Animated Movies, Timm said that it probably won't ever happen. While many loved the story, what most people remember about Kingdom Come is the incredible Alex Ross art. Since the film wouldn't look like the graphic novel it would get plenty of negative press for it.

Here is the full quote from Timm (via Bleeding Cool):

The one that we hear all the time is Kingdom Come and I have to, like, crush everyone's dream every single time because it's just not within the scope of what we can do with these movies. The main thing that people remember from Kingdom Come, beyond the story, is the look. It was Alex Ross, breaking big, doing "photorealistic superheroes", so if we did an animated version of Kingdom Come it would not look like that. We don't have the money, there isn't enough money on the planet to make it look like that, so there's really no reason to do it. Automatically, they would be disappointed, that'd be the number one thing on amazon and amazon reviews would be "one star – doesn't look like Alex Ross".

While Timm does make some good points, it's worth noting that a lot of the DC animated films don't emulate the look of the original comics. Death of Superman looked more in line with the established DC Animated Universe instead of the 90's story. Justice League: War doesn't look like a Jim Lee drawing at all. There are a few exceptions like Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, which looks like the drawings of Ed Mcguinness have come to life, but that's the exception, not the norm.

It's a shame that we will likely not see Kingdom Come as an animated movie. At least we have Gotham by Gaslight and Batman Ninja to look forward to.


Read:Batman: The Animated Series Coming To Blu-Ray

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