Photo credit: AP Images/Invision
Our good friends over at THR are reporting that Robert Kirkman has signed an exclusive first-look deal with Universal Pictures. The deal includes all Skybound titles, except the Cinemax optioned-through-a-bidding-war-before-it-was-even-published Outcast presumably.
Kirkman founded the imprint of Image comics, of which he is a partner, in 2010, and has since published all of his titles, as well as Brandon Seifert and artist Lukas Ketner’s Witch Doctor through the imprint. Kirkman and his fellow executive producer of The Walking Dead, David Alpert, have partnered for this deal.
“In high school I watched Army of Darkness pretty much every night before bed, so I’ve seen that Universal logo steering around the planet we call home about a thousand times,” said Kirkman. “The idea of producing movies that will bear that logo is just unbelievably awesome. We couldn’t find better partners than the team at Universal. I believe this partnership is going to help David and I achieve all the goals we set out to accomplish when we founded Skybound five years ago.”
Kirkman has had great luck with his properties in recent years, with the aforementioned Outcast, and the certified ratings smash The Walking Dead, as well as its already-renewed-for-a-second-season prequel Fear The Walking Dead, so this deal is unsurprising.
“Robert and David have proven themselves to be incredible storytellers in a wide range of mediums, and we are thrilled to be Skybound’s partner in the feature realm. We feel confident that their wealth of ideas and expertise will lead to exciting, provocative films for our slate,” said Universal co-presidents of production Peter Cramer and Jeffrey Kirschenbaum.
Skybound already has TV projects in the works at Cinemax (Outcast), Syfy (Clone), and AMC (Thief of Thieves), on top of the two Walking Dead series.
Could we be seeing Invincible sharing the big screen with the likes of The Avengers, Batman, Superman, and the others? Could this be the beginning of a Skybound shared universe? Stay tuned and see.
