American film audiences’ ongoing obsession with comic book movies—and their recent but equally fervent fascination with satirical horror entries like Jordan Peele’s Oscar winner Get Out—may be about to collide, with THR reporting that TriStar is working on a film adaptation of the Image Comics title Infidel. Written by Pornsak Pichetshote, and with art by Aaron Campbell, the book operates on a basic metaphor that’s about as subtle (and as potentially powerful) as the kind that once empowered the X-Men or the Fantastic Four: A Muslim-American woman moves into a building that’s secretly inhabited by murderous creatures empowered by thoughts and feelings of xenophobia. Given that this is taking place in American in 2018, carnage, inevitably, ensues.
The comic’s first issue was released back in March. And while “the monster is literally racism” might come off a little heavy-handed in theory, sometimes a heavy hand is what a particularly fraught topic requires. (Also, the racism monsters do look pretty spooky from what we can see of them in the comic previews.) The film version of Infidel is being developed by 13 Reasons Why producer Michael Sugar, under his Sugar23 production banner.