Deadline reports Apple Studios has greenlit Liminal, a film based on J. Michael Straczynski, Steve Epting, and Brian Reber‘s 2021 comics series Telepaths, directed by Louis Leterrier (Fast X, The Incredible Hulk). The sci-fi thriller will star Vanessa Kirby (The Fantastic Four: First Steps) and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Wonder Man), and be written by Justin Rhodes (Terminator: Dark Fate).
Telepaths, which was published by AWA Studios, revolved around a tenth of the world’s population gaining telepathic powers after an electromagnetic disturbance. It centered on a group of telepathic Boston police being sent up against a wrongly convicted prisoner, who has become a messiah figure for other telepaths “trying to escape a world in which their powers will make them targets.”
Alongside Straczynski, Epting and Reber, the film’s producers will include AWA Studios president Zach Studin; Kevin Walsh (Napoleon, which also starred Vanessa Kirby); Ray Angelic (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F); Patrick McNamara (Echo Valley); and Kirby’s sister Juliet Kirby (Night Always Comes).
Assuming being greenlit means it will begin filming this year, Liminal will become the first movie to be adapted from an AWA comic. Other films in development based on titles from the publisher, which was founded in 2018, include Hotell, Old Haunts, Marjorie Finnigan, Temporal Criminal, Devil’s Highway, and Chariot. The last one in particular was set to be helmed by AWA creative council member Joseph Kosinski, who directed F1 for Apple.
In the meantime, Straczynski fans can look forward to his next film as a screenwriter, based on the novel One Second After, to arrive sometime in the near future. Trade paperbacks of his Dark Horse series Synthetics, as well as his latest Marvel projects, 1776 & Amazing Spider-Man: Torn, will all be released this summer.
Additionally, Leterrier’s next film, the horror movie 11817, will be released on Netflix this year; Kirby will return as Sue Storm, the Invisible Woman, in Avengers: Doomsday on December 18; and Abdul-Mateen, whose Marvel show Wonder Man was renewed by Disney+ for a second season this week, will next star in the Netflix series Man on Fire, premiering April 30. You can check him out in action in a newly released preview, below:
