The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that George R. R. Martin’s popular superhero anthology series Wild Cards is to be made into a movie by SyFy Films and Universal Pictures.
Regular Tor.com readers will reconginze Wild Cards as a shared universe of superpowered people featuring stories written by some of the top names in the SF field. To get an idea of the style and story, read the Melinda Snodgrass story from the latest Wild Cards book Fort Freak: “The Rook.” You can also check out a Carrie Vaughn story recently reprinted from the first Wild Cards anthology: “Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film will have a modest budget and Wild Cards series co-creator Melinda Snodgrass will pen the screenplay.
The Hollywood Reporter issued statements from George R. R. Martin and and Syfy Films production VP regarding the project. Below:
Martin says the multiple voices makes the series stand out and allows newer characters to interact with older ones.
“One of the things we have going is the sense of history,” he says. “The comics in the mainstream are doing retcons [retroactive continuity] all the time. [Heroes] get married, then one day, the publisher changes his mind, and then they’re no longer married. To my mind, it’s very frustrating. [Our stories] are in real time. It’s a world that is changing in parallel to our own.”
“This is, beyond Marvel and DC, really the only universe where you have fully realized, fully integrated characters that have been built and developed over the course of 25 years,” says Gregory Noveck, Syfy Films’ senior vp production who joined the division in May and who targeted the books for acquisition. “The trick for us is to find what’s the best movie.”
No word yet on casting or shooting schedule. You can check out our full Wild Cards coverage here.
