As reported many places the upcoming post-apocalyptic actioner BOOK OF ELI starring Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman has a significant comics tie-in as both Chris Weston and Tommy Lee Edwards contributed significant amounts of concept art. Now both have created motion comics to support the film, which opens on January 15th.

Here’s Chapter 1 by Edwards

and Chapter 2 by Weston.

You remember Virgin Comics — a celebrity-driven line of periodicals and GNs by such folks as Nicolas Cage, Jenna Jameson, Dave Stewart, and so on? When Virgin broke up a while ago it morphed into Liquid Comics, a smaller company run by Virgin’s principals with similar development goals. Liquid was announced in Sept. 2008 and since then, news about the company seems to have evaporated…but they are still around and now announcing some projects.

Variety reports that Liquid has partnered with L&E Productions to launch Epic Cycle, a new line of graphic novels being developed for “multi-platforms.” L&E’s Eric Eisner, Liquid’s Sharad Devarajan, Gotham Chopra, and Suresh Seetharaman will come up with concepts and hire folks to turn them into graphic novels which can, presumably, be used as calling cards to get movies made.

The first three projects:

• H2O by Grant Calof, about “a global drought that creates a multicountry race to find water deep within the Earth.”

• A THOUSAND ARTS by Stuart Moore, “a kung fu adventure set in the Alaskan wilderness, where a transplanted Shaolin monk battles to protect his cultural heritage.”

• PURGATORY by Ron Marz, about “a rogue professor hired by the Catholic church to prove the afterlife exists” who endangers students during his experiments.

As usual, the superiority of the graphic novel as a medium to show flummoxed Hollywood types what something might look like is an important feature of the line:

“I had been looking for the right partner to develop properties through the graphic novel space, and Liquid reaches an audience without huge costs,” Eisner said. “The primary focus is to create properties with franchise potential, and studio-driven material.”

Devarajan added: “We’ve always looked at Liquid as a great way to incubate properties for films, games, animation and TV.”

The most successful entertainment offering of all time is not a film franchise or a TV show featuring Simon Cowell. It’s the video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which has grossed $3 billion worldwide since it was released on November 10. Holy samoleons. While video game movies have failed to replicate or exceed the success of their inspirations (although Jake Gyllenhaal’s abs are waiting in the wings) maybe it’s just because the wrong people were making them. With that in mind, COD:MW2’s director Keith Arem has been signed to direct a movie, or first person sitter in a theater, as some call them. Arem — who has worked in various capacities on over 500 video games — will not only direct FROST ROAD, but he wrote the script, and of course he is “developing a companion graphic novel with co-creator Brandon Humphreys and artist Christopher Shy. The story “concerns the survivors and victims of an invisible contagion in a small coastal Eastern town” and you know how people like that apocalyptic stuff.

“I’m extremely excited about this story,” said Arem, “and thrilled to have the opportunity to bring the skills I’ve honed in the game industry to the big screen. There’s an incredible talent pool currently working in the game industry, and I hope that the success of ‘Frost Road’ will give other creators the chance to show what they can do on a wider canvas.”

We haven’t given nearly enough coverage to Stephen Frears’movie adaptation of Posy Simmonds‘ brilliant Tamara Drewe graphic novel, but this is probably the most lit/comix-approved movie since GHOST WORLD. Variety reports that the movie has been picked up for US distribution by Sony after a modest bidding war. The title role will be played by Gemma Arterton, who already had a comic book movie role under her belt with St TRINIAN’S, and was the Alternate Bond Girl in QUANTUM OF SOLACE. Also cast are Dominic Cooper, Roger Allam, Luke Evans, Bill Camp and Tamsin Greig.

Arterton is definitely adorable, and we’re certain Beat readers will enjoy continued coverage of her activities.

In today’s Option News, David Gordon Green is set to direct FREAKS OF THE HEARTLAND, a film based on the Dark Horse graphic novel by Steve Niles and Greg Ruth.

Illustrated by Greg Ruth, Niles’ six-part 2004 series about the horrible secret of a rural Middle American town involves Trevor Owen’s attempts to protect his “monster” of a 6-year-old younger brother and Gristlewood Valley’s other “freaks” from their parents’ worst instincts.

Puttering around here on various projects, like PW Comics Week, a general sense of sadness is overtaking us. Adding up today’s postings, it turns out that in Hollywood, messing with one detail of a beloved comic book classic is enough to give a director flop sweats; whereas removing the structures that made one of the most powerful, haunting and profound novels ever written in English powerful, haunting and profound, is dubbed “giving it that graphic novel sensibility.”

I do not think that word means what you think it does. And I think we’re in for a long haul.

[Above image: one of Rockwell Kent's immortal illustrations for Moby Dick.]

Okay here’s one of those oddball pop culture anthologies: Harvest Is When I Need You The Most:

Harvest Is When I Need You the Most, features the talent of 8 cartoonists paying homage to the original Star Wars trilogy.

The 36 page, full color book releases at MoCCA Art Fest 2008, and will available for online orders on June 14!

We don’t really need more Star Wars, but we love the cover!

The keepers of the enw Kingdom Comics line at Disney, Ahmet Zappa and Christian Beranek, showed up at WW Philly and revealed more of their plans:

When asked how the duo would deal with the use of Disney’s beloved characters, Zappa responded, “We’re not trying to make Mickey Mouse comics. The goal of Kingdom Comics is to reimagine some of the great properties they have that are not so familiar to people. The biggest idea is to create new graphic novels that hit the Disney specifics, like a PG-13 adventure or a science-fiction piece tonally like Pirates of the Caribbean or National Treasure.”

Beranek added, “We’re doing the live-action Disney movies, we’re not really doing any animated stuff. We’d like to find a really cool way to take a Battlestar Galactica-style way of updating stuff.”

In response to a question about the hiring writers for Kingdom Comics, Beranek explained, ‘The best analogy to think of is if we make your graphic novel, it’s as if it’s being pre-optioned for a film. So it’s not like those rights as a creator are being ignored, they’re being negotiated.”

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