Comic book films are a dime a dozen. Nearly every major character across Marvel and DC have either appeared in a film or are slated to appear in a film. If you’re trying to further tap the well then to find something to make a comic book movie out of then, where do you turn to? The answer, naturally, is Image comics. Sitting comfortably in third place behind the two juggernauts Marvel and DC, Image is a creator focused publisher with a bevy of interesting and unused characters. One of them, Rob Liefeld‘s Prophet, will be making his way to the big screen with Jake Gynllenhaal in the lead.
“Prophet” is the creation of Rob Liefeld. Liefeld has worked on a number of different titles including Captain America, X-Force, Wolverine. He was also the co-creator of both Deadpool and Cable. Prophet could’ve easily slid into some of his Marvel works, but instead Liefeld put the character into his “Youngblood” series at Image Comics. Afterwards, the character would migrate to his own series. In some ways you could draw comparisons to Winter Soldier. Both characters are originally from the World War II era, have been taken in and out of stasis to complete missions for their superiors, and are genetically enhanced super-soldiers.
Gyllenhaal is obviously no stranger to genre films, having played Mysterio in “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” and Dastan in “Prince of Persia.”
The film will have a script by Kurt Johnstad, one of three credited screenwriters on yet another comic book adaptaion- “300.” He also wrote the criminally underrated “Atomic Blonde.” Based on the strength of that Charlize Theron film alone should give hope for this Prophet project. A previous version of the script was from Marc Guggenheim.
This version of Prophet will reportedly maintain the World War II origin story. Prophet is an ordinary family man who consents to being experimented on by German scientists to support his family. After a bombing sortie buries him underground for 20 years, he eventually comes to in 1965 to a new world. Also, the experiments that helped him survive the bomb blast make him a pretty valuable source of potential super-soldier DNA, with KGB agents aiming to hunt him down.
There is no director nor release date set for the film yet. It’s being produced by Studio 8, whose most noteworthy release was 2018’s “Alpha.” We’ll let you know what we hear about this and other news.
