KJ Apa and Isabel May to take the form of… the stars of that weird HBO Max Wonder Twins movie!
Archie from Riverdale and the narrator/star of 1883 are teaming up to turn into ice cubes and animals in the service of good
Across the entire vast universes of DC Comics publishing, few heroes have had a more tortured or written-by-committee history than Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins. Originally invented (along with their bucket-carrying space monkey, Gleek) to give uncreative children someone other than the planet’s most beloved superheroes to identify with in the old Super Friends cartoon—replacing the even less impressive (and unpowered) Wendy and Marvin in the process—the duo have been kicking around, mostly as a joke, for decades now.
But not anymore! Because who’s going to laugh at the Wonder Twins now, when they’re set to be played by, uh…Archie from Riverdale, and the narrator of that Paramount+ show where Tim McGraw and Faith Hill play frontier explorers together?
That’s right: KJ Apa and Isabel May are your new versions of Zan and Jayna, respectively, with Deadline reporting that the Riverdale and 1883 stars will play the purple-clad pair in that live-action HBO Max comedy film we told you about back in February.
Details about the film are being kept quiet so far, but the pair will presumably at least maintain their traditional powers: Jayna, with her legitimately impressive ability to turn herself into any animal she can name, and Zan with his somewhat less impressive power to turn into various forms of water. (And, yes, we know there are examples from both the cartoon and the comics where “Form of… hockey rink!” or whatever has been used to impressive effect; it still stinks of that “Aquaman’s actually awesome!” revisionist vibe that a certain class of dork finds irresistible.)
Wonder Twins is being written and directed by Adam Sztykiel, best known of late as a writer on Dwayne Johnson projects Rampage and Black Adam. He does have some straight comedy in his background, though, which is a nice way of saying he has a co-writing credit on the fourth Alvin And The Chipmunks movie, from 2015.
Apa, meanwhile, is best known as, well… Archie, from Riverdale. May herself has had some fairly diverse credits in her short career, including starring in a three season Netflix sitcom, Alexa & Katie, and in a school shooting action thriller, Run Hide Fight, that’s notable mostly for having been distributed by The Daily Wire in the U.S. She currently stars on 1883.