When Disney bought Marvel last year, we dreamt of Marvel characters gracing the broadcast television network that Disney happens to own: ABC. Such is finally coming to fruition, as news comes there is a major push to get Hulk back on television nearly three decades after the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno series The Incredible Hulk (1978-1982) went off the air. There is no showrunner attached yet, but recently knighted Marvel Television head Jeph Loeb (Heroes) is on the lookout.
But that's not all, folks! Marvel prepared a presentation of several titles they felt were suitable for adaptation. Among them, Cloak and Dagger and The Punisher seem most likely to enter development next. Hit the jump for the full list of possible adaptations.
According to Heat Vision, Marvel execs presented the following as possible series:
Heroes for Hire --- focusing on ex-con Luke Cage offering to take on bad guys for a price
The Eternals --- a race of superpowered beings live amid humanity in secret, inspiring legends
Agents of Atlas --- a superhero team comprised of Gorilla-Man, Jimmy Woo, M-11, The Uranian, Namora, and Venus
Alter Ego --- private investigator Jessica Jones takes on cases involving superhumans
The Hood --- a low-rent criminal discovers a cloak that gives him superpowers
Ka-Zar --- a Tarzan-type and his saber-toothed tiger must journey to the concrete jungle to seek justice
Daughters of the Dragon --- a dynamic female duo, one with a bionic arm and the other a granddaughter of a samurai, open a private-detective agency
The Punisher --- one man wages a war on crime; already adapted as two feature films
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This is where my general lack of comic knowledge comes back to haunt me, so I'd really appreciate any input in the comments as to which of these would make a truly awesome TV show.
Though not on the list, Cloak and Dagger appears to be priority #2 for Marvel Television. Loeb is currently meeting with writers to develop the show as an ABC Family vehicle.
For comic novices like myself, here is some background info:
Tyrone "Ty" Johnson (Cloak) and Tandy Bowen (Dagger) met in New York City as runaways... The two teens were soon forcibly delivered to a criminal chemist named Simon Marshall, who was developing a new synthetic heroin for Silvermane and the Maggia, testing it on runaway teens with fatal results. Johnson and Bowen somehow survived injections of the drug, and they fled. During their escape, the drug turned them into superpowered beings (it was later revealed that they were both actually mutants, and that the drug had simply awakened their latent abilities). Tyrone found himself engulfed in darkness and seized by a strange hunger which eased in the presence of Tandy, who was glowing with a brilliant light. Trying to hide his newly shadowy appearance in a makeshift cloak, Tyrone began absorbing Marshall's thugs into his darkness while Tandy struck them down with daggers of light. The two teens dubbed themselves Cloak & Dagger and declared war on drug crime in combating drug-dealers and helping runaway children. [Wikipedia]
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I can definitely picture that as a weekly series, though I wonder if "synthetic heroin" makes its way on to ABC Family.
The Punisher is another option, with Marvel considering it down the road as "a cable play." The property has already made it's way through three movies with three different actor: Dolph Lundgren in The Punisher (1989), Thomas Jane in The Punisher (2004) and Ray Stevenson in The Punisher: War Zone (2008). Here are the specs for this anti-hero:
The Punisher is a vigilante who employs murder, kidnapping, extortion, coercion, threats of violence and torture in his war on crime. Driven by the deaths of his family, who were killed by the mob when they witnessed a gangland execution in New York City's Central Park, the Punisher wages a one-man war on the mob and all criminals in general by using all manner of conventional war weaponry. His family's killers were the first to be slain. A war veteran, Castle is a master of martial arts, stealth tactics, guerrilla warfare and a wide variety of weapons. [Wikipedia]