"Remember, remember the 5th of November."
Warner Bros., Saga Arts, and Fathom Entertainment have shared a new trailer for V for Vendetta, which will return to theaters on November 1 and 5 to mark its 20th anniversary.
Originally released in 2006, James McTeigue's adaptation of one of Alan Moore's most celebrated works starred Hugo Weaving as V and Natalie Portman as Evey Hannomd. It was generally well received and proved to be a moderate box office success (it was a much bigger hit on DVD), but many fans of the far more complex comic series felt it missed the mark.
The screenings will also include “Freedom Forever,” a new featurette which takes a look back at the influences behind the film, the mythology surrounding V, and more.
“The award-winning V for Vendetta graphic novel led to one of the most provocative films in the early 2000s,” Shannah Miller, Vice President of Marketing at Fathom Entertainment, said in a statement. “Twenty years later, ‘V for Vendetta’ still asks the questions that matter: about freedom, identity, and who gets to speak up.”
Late last year, we learned that a new take V for Vendetta was in development at HBO, with BAFTA Award-nominated Somewhere Boy writer Pete Jackson attached to pen the series, and DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran on board as executive producers.
However, Jeff Sneider reported that the project is no longer moving forward back in July.
"I’m now told that HBO has passed on Jackson’s script," Sneider wrote in his newsletter. "One source told me that Jackson delivered a period-themed take on the material, while HBO was curious to see what a more modern take on a political anarchist might look like.
According to an HBO insider, just because the network isn’t moving forward with Jackson’s take doesn’t mean that a V for Vendetta series won’t be redeveloped with another writer down the line."
So, we may see a V for Vendetta series at some point, but we wouldn't bank on it.
Moore's 1982 tale is set in a dystopian Britain controlled by the fascist Norsefire party. An anarchist named V, inspired by the infamous revolutionary Guy Fawkes, attempts to take down the government with the help of a young woman named Evey Hammond.
Here's what Moore had to say about the origin of his idea for V during a 2000 interview.
"When we started to do V, the entirety of the original idea was that we would have a dark, romantic, noirish adventurer and then we thought we’d set him in the future and then the details slowly came together and yeah, somewhere out of this we realized we were doing something about the contrast between anarchy and fascism, that there were lots of moral questions being asked and that yes, it was very much centred upon the world of ideas as being in some ways more important than the material world, which is I think a notion which has probably born fruit recently in other areas of my work, where it’s still something that I’m very much involved with, that notion, that ideas are more important, if anything, than the material."