Rob Liefeld co-created Deadpool. Deadpool made a bucket of money at theaters (and not made money on a lot of digital downloads). So it would be only a matter of time before Hollywood came knocking at Mr. Liefeld’s door to see if he had any other characters he created just lying around. They did and he does-the Extreme Universe of characters.
Deadline is reporting that Graham King and Fundamental Films will be working to create films from the Extreme characters, films that will be co-produced by King, Liefeld and Akiva Goldsman. The agreement is rumored to be in the seven-figure range.
Extreme Studios was the umbrella Liefeld used for all the characters he created after he left Marvel Comics in the mid-1990s and helped cofound Image Comics. When Liefeld left Image, he merged the characters with his other studio, Maximum Press, which eventually became Awesome Comics. I guess he’s back to calling them the Extreme Universe.
According to the Deadline article:
The Extreme Universe covers nine comic books, encompassing more than 100 characters that include Brigade, Bloodstrike, Cybrid, Lethal, Re-Gex, Bloodwulf, Battlestone, Baboom and Nitro-Gen.
Noticeably missing from that list are some of Liefeld’s more well-known creator-owned characters such as Youngblood (which has been in and out of development, with Brett Ratner at one time attached), Supreme (which was already being shopped around Hollywood) and Avengelyne (which has a film adaptation in the works with Goldsman producing).
The article plays up the Deadpool angle, but to those expecting the same Deadpool quality experience, I’d like to point out that A) what made Deadpool such an intriguing character was added after Liefeld left Marvel and B) these are characters named Baboom and Nitro-Gen.
We’ll revisit this when development continues.
