Adam McKay To Bring IRREDEEMABLE Comic Book To Big Screen

Adam McKay will be bringing the comic book Irredeemable to the big screen. The Big Short director will be helming the adaptation of the Boom! Studios series for 20th Century Fox.

The series, created by Mark Waid and Peter Krause and which ran for 36 issues, tells the story of a Superman-like hero named the Plutonian who after years of selfless service to humanity seemingly snaps, turns evil and begins slaughtering anyone who would oppose him. The only ones who can stop him are the members of the superhero group he used to belong to, the Paradigm. But the group is rife with their own issues that prevent them from working effectively together, leaving it to one of the world’s greatest villains to be the world’s last hope in stopping the Plutonian’s rampage.

The series earned three nominations at the comics industry’s Eisner Awards the year it debuted, including the first of four Best Writer nominations for Waid. He finally won the award in 2012 when the series wrapped.

McKay will be directing from a script written by Hansel And Gretel: Witch Hunters writer-director Tommy Wirkola.

A well known comic book fan, McKay came close to directing Ant-Man for Marvel last year in the wake of Edgar Wright’s well-publicized departure from the project.

Irredeemable, and its companion series Incorruptible about a low level bad guy attempting to reform himself in the world devestated by the Plutonian’s devastation, were two of the best series that I have read in recent years. Sure the basic concept of “Superman goes bad” has been explored before, but free from the restraints of that corporate IP, Waid takes the idea to a dark, disturbing level.

The series is not the first from Boom! that Fox has put into development. Hopefully, the studio will be able to bring this or one of those other films to fruition, if only to further diversify the comic book adaptation genre.

Via Deadline.