Astro City Film Rights Bought

Working Title Films have bought the rights to Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, set in a city filled with superheroes, supervillains, and the normal humans stuck in the middle.  The graphic novels have won 20 Eisner and Harvey Awards since 1995.  It’s gone through several story arcs, such as a superhero (The Samaritan) who loves to fly but isn’t able to enjoy it because he’s too busy saving people, the initiation of an underage sidekick, and a regular person dealing with stress after surviving being held hostage by a supervillain, to name just the first three that popped into my head.  No word yet on which story arc will be covered by the movie, but they’ve got at least a few good potential movie scripts in this series.

“I’m thrilled to be doing ‘Astro City’ with Working Title Films,” said Busiek. “For years, we turned down all offers for the book, but Working Title’s track record on great movies like ‘Love Actually’, ‘Oh Brother, Where Are Thou?’ and ‘Shaun of the Dead’, and their commitment to high-quality, character-driven storytelling, make me confident that this is the perfect place to make an ‘Astro City’ film a reality.” [ComingSoon]

Shaun of the Dead; O Brother, Where Art Thou?; and . . . Love Actually?  One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn’t belong.