In some exciting news to close out this Tuesday, it was announced via The Hollywood Reporter that Legendary Television and producer Matt Tolmach (The Amazing Spider-Man franchise) have acquired the rights to Greg Rucka and Michael Lark‘s Eisner nominated Image series, Lazarus. The studio will be aiming to produce a new drama based on the popular dystopian series.
For those unfamilar, Lazarus centers on 16 familes that rule over all society in a futuristic world. Each family is protected by a genetically engineered being called a Lazarus, with one of these warriors, named Forever, acting as the central character of the series.
This won’t be the first Rucka property to get the live action treatment, as his series, Whiteout, was adapted into a film starring Kate Beckinsale. Additionally, Queen and Country is still in development, and is slated to star Ellen Page. Even some of their story elements from Rucka and Lark’s collaboration with Ed Brubaker, Gotham Central, wound up in Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight.
Rucka will script the pilot and will executive produce along with Lark and Tolmach.
Angela Cheng Caplan of Cheng Caplan Company, Inc. sold Lazarus on behalf of lit agent David Hale Smith of Inkwell Management. Rucka and Lark are represented by Stone, Meyer.
I imagine the speculator market on those Lazarus back issues is about to run pretty wild.
Fantastic news!
Kudos to Rucka and Lark, but it’s also a also victory for smart, intelligent comics. This brilliant concept works both as a thriller and as social commentary. Reading Nicholas Kristof’s NYTimes Op Ed this weekend, for instance, all I could think of was “This sounds like it’s right out of Lazarus”.
Really, of all the good independent comics they could’ve picked, and they went with Lazarus?
Yawn. Though, I can see why they would. It features exactly the kind of faux-intellectual plot that is so popular with modern television viewers, and not particularly original either.
Oh, well.
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