Paramount Pictures Will Produce a Series of Atlas Comic Book Movies with Akiva Goldsman Leading The Writers Room
Are you familiar with Atlas Comics? If not, it was a comic book publisher that launched in the 1950s and it ended up evolving into Marvel Comics. However, when Marvel launched out of Altas to become its own brand, not all of the comic book properties followed. There were still a lot of comics that only Atlas was producing.
Well, the rights to all of those Atlas properties were picked up by Ghost Rider producer Steven Paul and he teamed with Paramount Pictures to adapt them into movies. Paramount doesn’t really have many lucrative franchises other than Mission: Impossible and Transformers and a few other Hasbro properties that they have yet to get off the ground.
With comic book and superhero films being all the rage in Hollywood, it looks like Paramount is going to take what they can get, and now they have Atlas Comics. THR also announced that Akiva Goldsman (Batman Forever, The Da Vinci Code and I Am Legend) has signed on to lead the writers room for this project. He will bring in nine writers to “develop and build out the universe of characters from the expansive Atlas library.”
I’m sure the name Akiva Goldsman is familiar to you, and that’s because he’s been hired to lead several writing rooms in the past for Transformers, G.I. Joe, and other projects involving Hasbro. We haven’t really seen the results of his work on these franchises, though.
The first project is scheduled to start production in 2020 with a release date expected in 2021. The plan is then to release at least one superhero project a year after that. I guess it all depends on if the first movie is a box office success or not.
There’s no word on what the first film will be or what other characters and properties the producers are looking to bring to the big screen, but these are older comics that won’t be familiar to most audiences.
Some Tiger-Man, Sgt. Stryker’s Death Squad, Devilina, The Grim Ghost, Wulf, The Bog Beast, The Brute, and lot more. You can read all about Atlas Comics here. Paul acquired the properties from its owner Nemesis Group and principal Jason Goodman, who is the grandson of Martin Goodman, who was founder of Marvel Comics, which was later run by Martin’s cousin Stan Lee. Paul had this to say in a statement:
“We’re still counting the characters. Marvel has 4,700. I want to be up there.”
Paramount COO Andrew Gumpert went on to explain Paramount’s interest in mining the library:
“Intellectual property of this kind is hard to come by in this day and age, and we are excited to be working with Steven Paul and SP Media Group to bring the iconic Atlas comic book library to the big screen.”
Goldsman added:
“What an opportunity that we have with the Atlas universe, which spans so many genres: superheroes, sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural, horror, creatures, vampires, cops, cowboys, soldiers. The breadth of this material is extraordinary.”
That’s great and all, but if they want this to be successful for them, they have to make great movies! They can’t expect this to be a big success for them if they go out there and produce mediocre comic book movies. Unfortunately, when it comes to Paramount Pictures’ track record for adapting properties like this, it’s not very good.
Sure, the Transformers franchise made a ton of money, but even though the films were mediocre, there was already a built in audience for the franchise. When it comes to these other comics and characters, most people haven’t even heard of them, so it’s going to be a harder sell. They have to lure people in with awesome movies that tell great stories!
Some of these comic books and characters look like they will make for fun and entertaining films! I hope they are able to pull this off and deliver some great movies from this.