Warner Bros. to take legal action against ‘Line of Duty’ Showrunner Jed Mercurio

Jed Mercurio is one of the popular British writers who recently announced his graphic novel titled Sleeper. Another graphic novel in the same name is owned by Warner Bros. Pictures via their subsidiary, DC Comics. A spokesperson from DC Comics recently opened up on the issue and revealed how ‘unhappy’ they were on hearing this. 

Jed Mercurio to get in legal trouble with DC

According to Variety, a spokesperson from DC Comics recently reacted to the issue and revealed how the novel was his and Sean Philips’ first major project when they began their partnership at Wildstorm/DC Comics. He further stated how DC had no comment at this time. 

As the novel was being considered for screen adaptation featuring Ben Affleck, Brubaker, who created Marvel’s The Winter Soldier stated in his newsletter that the book had been under constant Hollywood interest or development. He also revealed how Sam Raimi and Tom Cruise tried to make it at Sony while WB recently had it set up with Ben Affleck attached to direct. He also added how the various trade and hardback collections of it had been in constant print for about 18 years. 

Further, he spoke about the time when he learnt about Jed Mercurio’s novel, he stated how it was a month back when he learnt about his graphic novel and recalled how he talked about his enjoyment of Mercurio’s TV shows before in his newsletters. Stating further, he revealed how 'unhappy' he was to hear that and added that it was Warner Bros. who owned the copyright and trademark to ‘Sleeper’ as a series of graphic novels. He further revealed how they were more concerned about the issue and predicted that there were a lot of legal things happening with them and the other publisher. 

One of Britain’s most successful television creators, Jed Mercurio co-wrote the novel with Prasanna Puwanarajah and was illustrated by artist Coke Navarro. Amazon described their novel as the story of “a cantankerous biologically enhanced marshal” who “finds himself embroiled in the hunt for a missing scientist and at the heart of a big energy conspiracy.”. Co-writer, Prasanna recently spoke about his latest novel stating, “No one is more surprised than me that I’ve become a graphic novelist. I literally had to Google, ‘how to write a graphic novel.”.

While there hasn’t been any confirmation regarding any legal action against Jed, the latter recently revealed that a TV pilot, based on the book, is in the pipeline. 

IMAGE: JED MERCURIO TWITTER