In 2017, a live-action movie based on the Robert Kirkman–created “Invincible” comics was announced. At the time, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg were attached to write and direct, then radio silence about the project. Even despite the success of Amazon’s animated series adaptation of the same comics.
That is until a roundtable interview with Kirkman at San Diego Comic-Con, where he confirmed the project is “still in development.”
“… It’s still in development. We’re still working with Universal,” Kirkman told The Direct. “You know, the show is going so well. I think the movie absolutely has to be perfect. And so it’s taking a lot of time, like getting the pieces aligned and getting everything to work so that we can come out and make it as good as it can possibly be. So it’s been in development for a long time, and it’s probably going to be in development for a while longer.”
Developing “Invincible”
Kirkman and the development team are very aware that, while they share the same source material, the two versions have to provide totally different experiences.
“Just because, in relation to the show, it has to provide a different experience, it has to still be true to ‘Invincible’ in some interesting ways. But it has to be its own thing,” he explains.” It has to stand on its own. And so that’s something we’re spending a lot of time crafting. But I think when it finally happens, it’s gonna be really cool.”
A Multimedia Franchise
Keeping the “Invincible” narrative cohesive across mediums may prove to be a challenge though. The franchise currently consists of comics, an animated series, games, and now a live-action movie.
“Well, I think it’s difficult,” said Kirkman. “And I think you can, that’s why the development process is taking so long because it’s tough to figure out, okay, the comic is this one thing, and then this animated series is this other thing, and now this movie has to be this third thing, it has to provide a new experience, but, you know, maybe tell the same story, maybe tell a different story.”
“Those are the kinds of things we’re trying to figure out,” he adds. “And it has to be as good as the show, but in a lot of ways, it has to be better than the show because, you know, movies are tough, and you got to get audiences into theaters. And that’s a process. It’s very difficult, but we’ve got a good team behind it. And I think that we’re hopefully going to do something pretty cool, but it may take so long that Timothée Chalamet can play Omni-Man.”
While it may be tough not to act all Veruca Salt about this because we want it now too. However, we are also not going to complain about a team taking their time to make sure they do the story justice. We’re pretty sure most fanboys/fangirls/fanfolks can think of a few terrible rushed adaptations of their favorite IPs.
We’ll keep you posted on updates about the “Invincible” live-action movie as it develops. You can catch the animated series on Amazon Prime with select seasons on the ad-supported Freevee.
