The FX network is developing a television series based on From Hell, Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s massive graphic novel retelling of the Jack the Ripper saga.  Dan Murphy (Transformers), who produced the 2001 film adaptation of From Hell, which starred Johnny Depp and Robbie Coltrane, will produce the new TV series.  The 2001 film, which was directed by the Hughes Brothers (who will not be involved in the TV show), debuted just five weeks after 9/11 and did only mediocre business, earning $31 million domestically and a total of $75 million worldwide.
 
Extreme liberties were taken with the structure of the 572-page graphic novel to fit it into the movie’s two- hour running time, and Alan Moore was reportedly upset at the changes wrought by the filmmakers, which, in his view, transformed From Hell from a work of existential historical fiction to a typical whodunit.  Since From Hell was the first of Moore’s major works to make it to the big screen, it is safe to assume that the author’s extreme disgust with film adaptations of his oeuvre date from this first experience.
 
Presumably, the TV adaptation, which according to Deadline, will be handled by David Arata (Children of Men), will suffer from the opposite effect--since if the TV series is at all successful, the show’s writers will have to expand Moore’s saga, which even at 572 pages, provides only enough narrative for one typically short cable series season (12-16 episodes).
 
The 2001 movie did stimulate sales of the From Hell graphic novel.  Publisher Top Shelf reported North American sales of over 140,000 copies of the graphic novel in the wake of the movie (see "Update 'From Hell'"), so the potential of a TV series, if it makes it through the developmental process and actually gets broadcast, to move graphic novel sales, would likely be considerable, especially if the writers of the series hew closely to the action in the graphic novel (at least for the first season).