Celebrated comics author Warren Ellis is nobody's sweetheart. Although a number of his books, including Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Hellblazer, and The Authority, have been widely praised, he's also...well, the polite term is "opinionated". He haunts the internet, an irascible insomniac akin to his own creation Doktor Sleepless, holing forth his views on everything from politics to culture to sex. He recently came under fire for some rather intemperate comments he made the night of Heath Ledger's death, having what many people have called a "John Byrne moment" (in reference to another famous comic book creator prone to loudmouthed blabbing) and earning him the enmity of Ledger fans who had theretofore never even heard of the man.
It's not the first time Ellis has had cross things to say about the movies. For a guy partially credited with the invention of the term "widescreen comics" (describing his own style of highly cinematic storytelling in The Authority), he's downright hostile to the very notion of a movie version of any of his work. In a recent interview with Something Awful, he's steadfastly resistant to the notion that any of his comics — even the much loved future-noir Transmetropolitan, which tells the tale of a Hunter Thompsonesque gonzo journalist out to expose political corruption in an urban dystopia — will ever make it to the big screen. "It'll never happen," says Ellis, whose idea of softening his stance is this: "We are going to see it done right or it will not be done at all. I would not be happy to lose control over that book." The title has fans in high places — Patrick Stewart is a fan, and in addition to writing the introduction to one of the Transmetropolitan collections, has expressed interest in playing Spider Jerusalem, the book's main character. But even Stewart's offers to produce the film version has come to naught, counting to Ellis merely as one of the "countless approaches" he and co-creator Darick Robertson have turned down.