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Filmmaker John Landis must be mounting quite a directorial comeback, as he not only has the upcoming comedy Burke & Hare in the works, but Deadline says he also has another biopic about EC Comics publisher and co-creator Bill Gaines, who was also one of the founders of Mad magazine. Landis is currently lining up financing for the film following Burke & Hare (but no assurances that this will be his very next project). Apparently the script for this is titled Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines and was written by Joel Eisenberg, of only Out of the Black and Hollywood Vampyr previously. Sounds like it could be interesting. Gaines was a published who was driven out of the comic book business in the 1950s by "morality policers" after his unapologetic testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee investigating juvenile delinquency. In turn, he started Mad as a "satirical magazine which specialized in...

As the publisher and co-editor of EC comics and as the publisher for Mad Magazine for more than 40 years, William Gaines was the center of a whole lot of controversy. In 1947, after a brief stint in the military, Gaines took over his father’s EC comics. At the time, it stood for Educational Comics, and most of the stories were adapations of Biblical stories. Gaines would have none of that, and he found his calling in publishing horror stories.

Under the EC Comics logo, he would release such classics as “Tales from the Crypt,” “The Vault of Fear,” ‘Two-Fisted Tales,” and more. In the 1950s, Gaines gave an unapologetic testimony to a Senate Subcommittee investigating morality in the comic books of the era.

There is so much that could be told in a biopic on the publisher’s life, and here is where you come in today. Who should play...

Joel Eisenberg and his Iron Mountain Media have picked up the life rights to renowned publisher William M. Gaines to co-produce a biopic based on the life of the man who was behind EC Comics' Tales From the Crypt and Mad magazine.

"Ghoulishly Yours, William M. Gaines," which is being scripted by Eisenberg, will revolve around the banding together of an anti-establishment group of comic book creators, led by a reluctant Gaines, as they produce their controversial yet hugely popular line of comic books like Crypt, which later led Gaines to face Senate subcommittee hearings over accusations of perpetuating juvenile delinquency.

Eisenberg wrote the indie thriller Out of the Black and wrote and produced the goth thriller Hollywood Vampyr.