Kurt Busiek's Astro City coming to TV

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Submitted by Mike 'Ace' Maillaro on Sat, 03/24/2018 - 09:16

From Deadline:

American Gods producer FremantleMedia North America has acquired the rights to Astro City superhero comic book series to develop as a live-action TV drama series.

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Astro City made its debut in 1995 with Image Comics and is currently published by DC Comics.

Despite the fact that the comic books’ current publisher, DC Comics, is owned by Warner Bros., Busiek owns all of the rights to Astro City, which he will now exploit in TV with FMNA.

The fictional Astro City universe explores the lives of ordinary people and those of the all-too-human superhumans in their midst, and their collective, daily struggle to hold on to hope in the face of world-shaking, life-altering events beyond any single individual’s control

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“It’s a thrill to be working with Rick, Gregory and FremantleMedia on this,” said Busiek. “Everyone, at every turn, is supportive, helpful and completely focused on capturing the feel of Astro City and bringing it to life as a TV show.”

Source: Deadline

Commentary: In a lot of ways, I am surprised that it's taken this long to get some kind of adaptation of ASTRO CITY. There have always been rumors about some kind of TV series or movie in the works, pretty much since ASTRO CITY debuted 23 years ago. What I have always loved about ASTRO CITY is that it takes a very different approach to superhero stories. It focuses much more on the impact of what a world would look like if superheroes were real. What would newspapers and movies be like? What is a marriage like in a world where you may wake up to find that your wife was wiped out of existence because of a big crossover event?

I do think that the tricky part of adapting ASTRO CITY is going to be that people may see the characters as derivative. ASTRO CITY has always done a terrific job in skewing towards homage and never a blatant rip off. But will the TV viewer be willing to see Samaritan, Confessor, and Jack in the Box as characters on their own, or will the audience focus too heavily on "Hey, those guys are rip offs of Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man?"

I have been an ASTRO CITY fan pretty much from day one. I love the idea of seeing ASTRO CITY's world on TV, especially since the comic series is coming to an end in the next few months. Busiek has promised that would we still get ASTRO CITY graphic novels every now and then, but it's just not the same for me.