‘Deadpool’ Creator Rob Liefeld Plans Extreme Universe Film Series With Graham King, Akiva Goldsman
The comic universe created by artist Rob Liefeld is headed to the big screen.
Producer Graham King, Chinese outfit Fundamental Films and writer-producer Akiva Goldsman are partnering to create a film franchise out of the comic creations.
King and Fundamental have secured the film rights to Liefeld’s Extreme Universe, which King and Goldsman will develop. The duo plan to set up a writers’ room to brainstorm, which Goldsman, who has shepherded similar processes for the Transformers and Hasbro film universes, will oversee.
Liefeld was the superstar artist who co-created X-Men characters Deadpool and Cable before co-founding Image Comics in the early 1990s. Over the course of the decade and various imprints, Leifeld put out comics that featured heroes, antiheroes and villains and superteams named Youngblood, Bloodstrike, Bloodwulf, Re-Gex and Kaboom. Youngblood is not part of the Extreme deal but many of the other characters and comics are.
King and Goldsman will produce the titles alongside Liefeld and Brooklyn Weaver. Weed Road’s president of production Greg Lessans and GK Films’ Denis O’Sullivan will executive produce.“
Over the past nearly 25 years, since launching Image Comics, I’ve been lucky enough to see the power of these stories and characters as they’ve resonated with several generations of comic book fans,” Liefeld said Tuesday in a statement. “To now be able to work with Akiva Goldsman and Graham King, who are powerhouses in their own right, to bring these compelling characters and conflicts to life on the big screen is nothing short of a dream come true!”
Fundamental is a rising Shanghai-based media company that has a 28 percent share in Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp and will distribute in its territories EuropaCorp’s Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.
King is coming off of producing Allies, the World War II romantic drama that starred Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. He also is producing the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot as well as Bohemian Rhapsody, the Freddie Mercury biopic that will star Rami Malek.
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