The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman has secured himself a new series with Amazon Studios. The news comes a little under a year after Kirkman moved his overall deal from AMC to Amazon.
The series in question will be an animated drama based on his Invincible comics. The project was originally set to be a feature film at Universal, but Amazon Studios has instead snatched it up with a straight-to-series order.
Kirkman created Invincible for Image Comics Universe with artist Cory Walker, with illustrations by artist Ryan Ottley. The character of Invincible made his first appearance in Tech Jacket #1 in November 2002, before he graduated to his own series in 2003. Invincible was the first title in Image’s then-new superhero line.
Sharon Yguado, head of scripted genre programming at Amazon Studios, said: “Robert has an uncanny talent to predict the zeitgeist, and we are incredibly excited to see him break boundaries in an animated one-hour format. In a world saturated with superhero fare, we trust Robert to subvert expectations while encapsulating a story filled with heart and adrenaline. We love his ambitious plan for the show and believe it will look like nothing else on television.”
“I couldn’t be more proud of the series Cory Walker, Ryan Ottley and I did together for over 15 years,” Kirkman said. “To know our characters will live on in multiple iterations in other media is almost too exciting to bear! What Amazon is allowing us to do in animated form is nothing short of ground-breaking, and I can’t wait for our rabid fan base to experience it!”
The new show will be produced by Kirkman’s Skybound banner, with Simon Racioppa (Fangbone!, Spliced, Teen Titans) lined up to serve as showrunner. Kirkman, Racioppa, David Alpert (The Walking Dead) and Catherine Winder (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) are all set to executive produce, while Justin and Chris Copeland (Ultimate Spider-Man) will be supervising directors.
You can read the synopsis for Invincible Vol 1: Family Matters here:
Mark Grayson is just like most everyone else his age. He’s a senior at a normal American high School. He has a crappy part time job after school and on weekends. He likes girls quite a bit… but doesn’t quite understand them. He enjoys hanging out with his friends, and sleeping late on Saturdays… at least until the good cartoons come on. The only difference between Mark and everyone else is that his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, and as of late, he seems to be inheriting his father’s powers. Which sounds okay at first, but how do you follow in your father’s footsteps when you know you will never live up to his standards? THIS ISSUE: Get in on the ground floor, because it all starts here! Strange things begin to happen to Mark Grayson as he begins to develop superpowers. Luckily, his dad is around to show him the ropes, at least he WOULD be if he weren’t so busy saving the world all the time. Mark is forced to go out on his own, and try and figure out how all this superheroing business works. The results are a monumental disaster, at least until he gets the hang of it. Watch Mark thwart thieving super-villains, alien invasions and all sorts of craziness.
Invincible doesn’t yet have a release date. Get all the latest superhero news with every issue of SciFiNow.