Taika Waititi's next comic book venture is The Incal film adaptation
The director is once again teaming up with What We Do In The Shadows collaborator Jemaine Clement
Straight off of working in the MCU on Thor: Love And Thunder, director Taika Waititi is delving into another expansive comic book universe with The Incal, the ‘80s graphic novel series created by Alejandro Jodorowsky and the late French artist Moebius.
Waititi is teaming up with frequent collaborator Jemaine Clement for the script, as well as Peter Warren. Clement and Waititi are known for their work together on the vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows as well as Flight Of The Concords. Warren joins the duo as a relative newcomer whose most recent work is the 2016 comedy Ghost Team.
According to THR, Waititi received 92-year-old Jodorowsky’s blessing over an “emotional Zoom meeting” in which the two men discussed his visions for the property.
“The films and graphic novels of Alejandro Jodorowsky have influenced me and so many others for so long,” Waititi said in a statement to THR. “I was stunned to be given the opportunity to bring his iconic characters to life and I am grateful to Alejandro, Fabrice and everyone at Humanoids for trusting me to do so.”
The Incal follows intergalactic private eye John Difool, who gets caught up in a grand space opera after finding a mystical and precious artifact called the Incal.
Joined by a ragtag crew, Difool embarks on a journey to save the universe. When writing The Incal, Jodorowsky found inspiration in another sci-fi epic, Dune, but created his own influential and beloved body of work, spurring the creation of the “Jodoverse.” As the universe’s foundation, The Incal is the highest-selling science fiction graphic novel in history.
No studio or streaming service is yet attached to the film, and the heads over at the publisher Humanoids want Waititi to complete his script before moving forward with possible distribution. A first draft of the script is expected by the end of the year.
The Incal marks the first time publisher Humanoids pursued a film adaptation for any of their works, and executives say they want to give as “much freedom as possible to [their] talent.”
“We already have something very substantial, and it’s a complicated book. It’s vast,” Humanoids CEO Fabrice Giger said. “We love the way he approached it.”
The Incal joins Waititi’s ambitious slate of ongoing sci-fi work, as the director also helms an untitled Star Wars feature, a live-action remake of Flash Gordon, and the television adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 film, Time Bandits. Oh, and he will eventually get around to a live-action adaptation of Akira. As if that’s not enough, his Hulu series Reservation Dogs has been renewed for a second season and he’s working on another series with Clement. Busy, busy man.