Marvel Comics editor and writer Carl Potts created Alien Legion in 1983 for the publisher's creator-owned imprint, Epic Comics. At Marvel, Potts worked as an editor on Punisher, the Incredible Hulk, Doctor Stranger, The Defenders, and several other popular titles.
Forty years later, Warner Bros. has announced that they are greenlighting a film adaptation of the comic, with Deadpool director Tim Miller (Love, Death & Robots) attached to helm the project.
Miller apparently wanted to tackle the comic earlier in his career, prior to his rise to prominence with Deadpool. At the time, he envisioned the property as an animated film for Blur Studios, the VFX and animation company he co-founded in 1995.
The Hollywood Reporter adds that WB is aiming to turn the IP into a "space opera franchise" seeking to stake a claim to real estate traditionally dominated by Star Wars and Star Trek.
Netflix also recently entered the space opera game with Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon. Perhaps rival studios now view the once infallible Star Wars franchise as vulnerable after an incredibly polarizing new film trilogy?
Per THR, Alien Legion is "focused on a intergalactic peace-keeping force that took in all manner of species without asking too many questions about their pasts or intentions, operating within an unwieldly government system known as the Galactic Union that is straining to be a democratic melting pot."
The description definitely gives off tones closer to Star Trek than Star Wars, as additional reporting states that various Hollywood executives have been trying to adapt the IP for nearly two decades.
An omnibus for Alien Legion is available on Amazon which provides a bit more information on the comic.
Footsloggers and soldiers of fortune, priests, poets, killers, and cads - they fight for a future Galarchy, for cash, for a cause, for the thrill of adventure. Culled from the forgotten and unwanted of three galaxies, they are trained to be the most elite, and expendable, of fighting forces. Sometimes peacekeepers, sometimes shock troops, the Legion is sent into the Galarchy's most desperate internal and external conflicts. Legionnaires live rough and they die hard, tough as tungsten and loyal to the dirty end.
Alien Legion creator Carl Potts on the series: "The original concept was the 'Foreign Legion in space,' and all the legionnaires were human. The Alien Legion universe is a giant extrapolation of the American democratic melting-pot society, where different races and cultures work together for the common good while dealing with the pluses and problems that the nation's diversity creates."
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