According to a recent story in the Hollywood Reporter, ABC has optioned the Vertigo comics series Fables and will be creating a series pilot, written by Stu Zicherman and Raven Metzner, who created and executive-produced 2006's canceled-and-banished-to-the-Web drama series Six Degrees. The pilot will be considered for pickup for ABC's 2009-2010 season.
Bill Willingham's ongoing series follows a number of fairy-tale characters (Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf, Hansel and Gretel, Rapunzel and many more obscure "fables") who were driven from their magical worlds by an encroaching force known as the Adversary; while early story arcs focus on a murder mystery and trouble among the ex-pat fables in the mundane world (or "the Mundy"), the series eventually got into the nature and identity of, and the war against, The Adversary. Vertigo recently published the 11th trade paperback collection of the series, which is also ongoing in individual issues. A continuing spin-off series, Jack Of Fables, is written by Willingham's partner Matthew Sturges.
The series does have a number of things that would make it an excellent TV show: Strong ongoing story arcs, big drama, a lot of creativity, a cast of very familiar characters that are comfortably in the public domain. And yet it's hard to imagine a TV series playing the drama straight, and not trying to glam it up or tone down the fantasy elements. Chicago Tribune TV critic Maureen Ryan (in a piece that links to my 2007 interview with Bill Willingham) suggests that if handled right, Fables the TV series could be the next Lost. What she doesn't say is that if handled wrong, it could be the next The Charmings.