Kurt Busiek’s Astro City has been oiptioned by Working Title:
Working Title Films partners Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner have made a deal to turn Kurt Busiek’s graphic novel series Astro City into a live action feature. The deal gives the prolific comic book writer Busiek his first chance to write the script. Launched in 1995, the series has a Sin City anthology vibe, set in a world crammed with superheros and super-villains. Stories are told from the vantage point of those heroes and villains, as well as the humans who get caught between them. Heroes range from Samaritan, The Hanged Man, The Apollo Eleven–a group of astronauts mutated during a moon landing–to Winged Beauty, a feisty feminist who always saves women first. The series has won multiple Eisner and Harvey Awards for Busiek, who created the series with artists Brent Anderson and Alex Ross.
Don’t puzzle too much about that Sin City reference; that’s just the last sort of arty superheroesque movie to make it big in Hollywood, so it’s de rigeur to mention with this sort of project… I’m not sure how well Astro City will work on the big screen: it depends very much on the story adapted. Seeing Kurt himself involved is a good sign; he’ll know how to go about it.
Back when Astro City started, in 1995, I dedicated my first website to it, which for a while was one of the best visited sites at my uni, especially after Kurt mentioned in an early issue. You can see the remains at kbac.orcon.net.nz. I haven’t really kept up with the series after I got fed up with comics in 2000; I should start again.