Outcast, a new
Image comic book series from Robert Kirkman and
Paul Azaceta has a pretty interesting synopsis.
The story follows a man named Kyle Barnes, a man that's been plagued by supernatural possessions since childhood. Now an adult, Kyle starts a journey to get answers but those answers may result in the end of the world. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Kirkman shed a bit more light on the plot and also discussed the tv adaptation already in development at Cinemax. Said Kirkman, "I've been calling
Outcast a "horror epic" and I think it will definitely live up to that. We're going to start the story in a very familiar place with demonic possession and play with some of the tropes that people expect from these kinds of storylines. But as Kyle gets deeper and deeper into discovering the ins and outs of this world, he is definitely going to uncover something that is very world-threatening, that he is very much at the center of, that he is the key to trying to prevent. The stakes as the story goes are going to continue to get higher and higher."
Kirkman dove deeper into the Outcast tv adaptation, comparing the show to the currently airing Showtime drama
Penny Dreadful and NBC's upcoming
Constatine show. "[Showtime's]
Penny Dreadful is dancing around the edges of this and something like [NBC's]
Constantine looks like it's going to be dealing with a more action-driven angle of this," said Kirkman. He continued, "
Outcast is going to go down this emotional road and show this really deep character-driven emotional journey that will make it stand apart from any other explorations of exorcism and demonic possession that are going on on TV right now. I think there's room for all that stuff."
But of course, the natural comparison for the Outcast tv show will be to
The Walking Dead. "There's definitely going to be a lot similarities, but despite the fact that I'm writing the comic and writing the pilot episode of the series, you will see some pretty big differences," revealed the best-selling comic book author. "There are certain ways to tell a story, and certain mechanics and things that work really well in comics that don't work well on television and vice versa. There are certain opportunities to be taken when you adapt something into television, where you have motion and sound, where you can expand on and change things in very cool ways in a manner that wouldn't have worked so well in comics. To be honest, that's the fun part and the challenge of saying, "This is going to be moving and there's going to be actors, and it's going to have sound, and there are different things to be done." It's cool to limit the same story and think about it in a different way."
Interesting answers from Kirkman. Although, the main question I would have is whether the Outcast tv show will be a loose adaptation of the comic book, like AMC's The Walking Dead; or, will he stick more closely to the source material this time around? Outcast #1 will be released June 25th in local comic book stores and online. Expect the tv show to follow sometime thereafter, once enough issues have been released for a first season. In addition to Outcast and The Walking Dead, Kirkman also has a television adaptation of Thief of Thieves in development at AMC.
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