Marvel’s RUNAWAYS Begins Casting

It appears that Marvel Studios has begun casting its next comic book adaptation, Runaways.

Teen actress and singer Keke Palmer has told Essence magazine –

I’ve had a nice little break with the steady TV show but I’m definitely ready to do some more films again. I was just asked to join a new Marvel comic project called, Runaways.

Palmler is probably best known to movie audiences for her roll in the spelling bee drama Akeelah and the Bee, though she has had success with the Disney Channel series True Jackson, VP.

It is unclear as to what role she has been offered though, as while there are numerous female characters in the series, none of them are African-American. Is Marvel playing fast and loose with the ethnicity of the characters in their casting process? If they are, it doesn’t bother me all that much, and that’s speaking as a fan of the series. The Runaways cast has always been a fairly diverse one, so if they change things around a bit, I think I can live with it.

Runaways was created by writer Brian K Vaughn and artist Adrian Alphona as a superhero spin on the idea of teen rebellion. The series focuses on a group of teenagers who discover that their parents are a supervillain cabal known as The Pride and that they have their own powers they can use to stop them. Vaughn took a pass at a screenplay for the project in 2008. In addition to his acclaimed comics work with his original series Y: The Last Man and the recently concluded Ex Machina, both of which are currently in feature film development, Vaughn has served as a writer/producer for seasons four and five of Lost.

Peter Sollett is directing from a script by British screenwriter Drew Pearce. Production is expected to get underway in the spring.

Via SlashFilm.