If you think the premise for ABC’s hit series Once Upon a Time sounds a bit like the Eisner-award winning comic book series Fables, you’re not alone. That point has been made a lot since the series was announced and was the flame was probably fanned a bit because ABC was at one time developing a television version of the popular comic book.
Fables’ creator Bill Willingham spoke to Comic Book Resources and addressed the similarities between his comic book series and the hit show.
“Our fantastic literature is rife with ‘they’ve been hiding amongst us all along’ scenarios,” he says. “There were plenty of such tales long before Fables came along. There will be scads of them long after Once has aired its final episode and Fables shipped its final issue. If you start with the notion of fairy tale characters still alive in the modern world, the next step of placing them in a secret community seems almost axiomatic.”
As for whether there’s any connection between Time and the once in development Fables project, Willingham says, “”Yes, but that by itself doesn’t prove anything. First of all, I am and always was on the outside of any deals between DC/Warner and any studio regarding a Fables adaptation. DC didn’t want me as part of the deal making and paid handsomely not to have me directly involved. So it was their baby all along. As such, I was never privy to the details of that supposed deal with ABC. I heard the same rumors you did, that the writers of that project weren’t supposed to have made the big announcement when they did. In any case, the ABC Fables project went no further than creating an unproduced pilot script. I eventually got to read that pilot, and it was a far cry from anything to do with Fables.”
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