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Dark Horse's Emily the Strange Coming to the Big Screen

by Alex Billington
May 30, 2008

I definitely saw this coming! Ever since I saw Emily the Strange get a huge promotional push at the San Diego Comic-Con last year, I knew that it was destined to eventually become a movie. Announced officially today, Dark Horse Entertainment is adapting the goth comic book series into a feature film with Mike Richardson (30 Days of Night, Hellboy II) producing. The film will tell the origin story of the little goth girl and her four mysterious cats. Richardson explains his interest, saying "Emily herself is very appealing little girl, there's an edge to her," adding that, "there is something very alluring to her image; people see it and respond to it immediately." Is she appealing enough to actually attract moviegoing audiences though?

The character Emily the Strange was first created by skater Rob Reger in the early 1990s as a design on skateboards. She didn't appear in comics until 2005, when Dark Horse Comics first published a comic miniseries about the character and her goth adventures. Thankfully Richardson is making the smart decision to search for a filmmaker who "gets the character," as he says, only because most people don't. In fact, I don't even really get who she is or have an interest in her myself. However, it could be an interesting project. The announcement doesn't specify whether it will be live action, animated, or a combination. And actually with that mention, I could see this turning out kind of cool. Let me explain.

Not many people saw Persepolis last year, but it it was a brilliant little animated film with a very distinct visual style. If they were able to animated the film somewhat like that, which was black and white, and also combine live action elements, I actually feel like this could be pretty interesting. But alas, that's hard to tell, only because I'm not fond of the character to begin with and really can't imagine it being the basis for a good story anyway. I'll definitely be following this project as it develops to at least see how it turns out.

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