Yahoo Finance DC developing Milestone animated movie based on classic Black superhero comics characters
It's a Milestone moment for some of DC's most beloved superhero characters.
An animated movie based on comics from DC's Milestone Media imprint is in development, writer-producer Reginald Hudlin and Milestone co-founder Denys Cowan announced during the DC FanDome event on Saturday. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, the movie will be written by Brandon Thomas, known for penning this year's Hardware Season One comics series.
Further details have yet to be revealed, but Cowan said the movie will focus on "more than one character," hinting that an ensemble of such characters as Static, Hardware, and Icon and Rocket will be included.
"This has been the thing that Milestone fans have been dreaming about for a long time, and we're happy to give it to you, finally," Cowan added.
Milestone launched in 1993 with the intention of creating more mainstream Black superheroes, featuring a group of characters from the fictional city of Dakota whose identities and backgrounds were central to their power. Though it shut down in 1997 and its output remained out of print for years due to various legal issues, the imprint relaunched this year with several digital-first series, while also making its classic titles available digitally.
"What's really important about Milestone is you have Black artists and Black writers creating not just Black characters in an otherwise white universe but a whole diverse universe of Black, white, Asian, Latinx characters all interacting," Hudlin told EW earlier this year.
At DC FanDome, Cowan and Hudlin also announced a new Blood Syndicate comic book series is coming next year, reviving another of Milestone's classic titles following new series featuring Static, Icon and Rocket, and Hardware. The imprint's classic series will also be collected in a new 1,300-page softcover compendium, set to be released on Feb. 1, 2022. The compendium collects issues #1-12 of Blood Syndicate, Hardware #1 -12, Icon #1-10, Static #1-8, Xombi #1-8, and Shadow Cabinet #0.
Through Milestone, DC is also launching a new program to recruit diverse writers and artists within the comic book industry. The Milestone Initiative, in collaboration with Ally, will allow U.S. fans to apply for a development program that includes a one-week in-person training seminar in DC's Burbank, Calif. offices and an eight-week virtual technical training course through the prestigious Kubert School. (More information and the application can be found here.)
Meanwhile, the animated movie isn't the only project brewing that will bring Milestone characters to the screen. As EW previously reported, a Static Shock movie produced by Michael B. Jordan is in the works, with Randy McKinnon (Netflix's Grand Army) writing the script.
"He's an enormously talented writer, and every time we talk we have a great time bouncing off each other," Hudlin previously told EW. "I'm excited as I wait for the pages coming in. We're very pumped about it."
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