Universal picks up Umbrella Academy
Dark Horse and Universal Pictures are moving forward with an adaptation of Umbrella Academy, the Eisner Award-winning miniseries by Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba.
Way, who’s best known as the front man for My Chemical Romance, told IESB this weekend that Universal has picked up the option — no surprise, as Dark Horse has a first-look deal with the studio — and now they’re on the hunt for screenwriters and a director. Way named Alfonso Cuarón, director of Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, as a favorite.
Apparently, Universal has suggested Diablo Cody (Juno) as a possible writer.
The Ticker
• Warner Bros. will preview new footage of Watchmen on Tuesday during Spike TV’s Third Annual Scream Awards. The ceremony airs at 9 p.m. [Sci Fi Wire]
• Warner Bros. is “100 percent supporting” a campaign for an Oscar nod for Heath Ledger. [EW.com]
• Samuel L. Jackson confirms he’ll appear as Nick Fury in Iron Man 2. [Latino Review]
• Rookie screenwriter Brad Inglesby has been hired to adapt Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’ Sleeper for Warner Bros. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• Frank Miller says The Spirit will blend eras and influences: “It’s romantic, but as in Sin City, you don’t know what date it is. It’s a very urban/Zorro story. I tried to make it as timeless as possible, so you will see cell phones and vintage cars and not really know where you are.” [Sci Fi Wire]
October 20th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Diablo Cody? Great. All the actors will be talking in shorthand text. OMG LOL. People forget shes a stripper first, writer second.
October 20th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
God I wish Cruise wouldn’t be in Sleeper, I can’t really separate him on screen from him off screen any more.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Sigh. No, people forget she’s a writer who worked as a stripper for a year as research for a book. Her professional writing predated her stripping, and obviously continued long after.
Writer first, stripper second.
October 20th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
As opposed to your scripts, which would be oh-so clever remarks?
What’s the problem with her having been a stripper, anyhow? Lots of directors or people in the industry don’t just start out making films as soon as they’re done at film school or whatever. Tarantino worked in a video store, Harrison Ford was a carpenter, etc, etc.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Dear god no. Not fucking Dia-blows Cody.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
..You know i didn’t know she was a stripper, this puts my comment in a whole different context.
October 20th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Too many people take the easy way out with Diablo Cody and insult her for her stripping, which is a fairly sexist dismissal that does little justice to how truly terrible of a screenwriter she is.
The problem is less that Diablo Cody stripped stripped and more that Juno was an atrocious screenplay with characterizations possessing all the depth of a self-insertion fanfiction. Juno is so clever and always right and every decision she makes works out perfectly and even when she does something wrong everyone forgives her because she’s JUST SO GREAT. Meanwhile everyone else is reduced to orbiting around her, marveling at how captivating and unique she is and to top it all off, the only character in the script that bares any resemblance to a real person undergoes an abrupt 180 degree turn to become a sleazy creep who wants to throw away his marriage to have sex with a pregnant 16 year old because Cody realized that she needed to have a conflict in the film. Because naturally Mary Sueno is JUST SO SPECIAL, what man could ever resist her?
October 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
JUNO was overrated. It was also good. Diablo Cody has the makings of a fine writer- she’s still young, and JUNO has a lot of “young writer” problems, but she herself acknowledges that she’s got growing to do as an artist. It’s a good movie on the whole- the characters are solid, the plot goes in unexpected directions, and the dialogue, though overly cute, takes on a rhythm of its own after a while. (And really, don’t we WANT characters in movies to speak cleverly?)
Some day she’ll write something truly great. I’m not sure THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY will be it, but she’s got promise.
October 21st, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Yay, a big argument about whether Diablo Cody sucks or not. I’ve never seen one of those flare up at the mention of her name before.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:39 pm
Does anyone remember the Comic-Con panel where Way and Morrison were promoting Umbrella Academy and they started bitching about comics being “cheesy pitch documents for movies” and saying “we really want comics to be comics.” Yeah.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:48 pm
There’s a big difference between creating a comic that later gets made into a movie — well, at least optioned as one — and creating a comic so that it gets made into a movie.
October 22nd, 2008 at 4:04 am
If Cauron can direct this that would be perfect in my opinion. Nice reccomendation by Way on that one.