For more than a decade, Jeff Lemire has been one of the most talented and prolific writers in the comic book industry. Whether working on books such as Moon Knight or Animal Man for the Big 2 or creating a horror masterpiece in Gideon Falls for Image Comics, Lemire has proven himself a singular talent with a penchant for inspired and imaginative tales that can quickly capture an audience. In a time when comic book properties remain a key part of Hollywood’s present and future, Lemire has already seen one of his titles, Sweet Tooth, adapted as a Netflix streaming series, another, Descender, in development as a film at Sony, and a third, Gideon Falls, in development as a television series by James Wan’s Atomic Monster. And soon Lemire can add another one of his creations to the list of page-to-screen adaptations as Amazon Studios is developing what is arguably the creator’s finest work into a shared cinematic universe.
Murphy’s Multiverse can exclusively report that Lemire and Amazon Studios have begun developing a shared cinematic universe based on The World of Black Hammer.
The World of Black Hammer consists of over a half-dozen titles that spun out of the multiple Eisner Award-winning series Black Hammer, a creator-owned comic that Lemire launched in 2016 after nearly a decade of development. The core series centered on a group of heroes who found themselves trapped in the strange, rural town of Rockwood after saving the world from a character known as the Anti-God. Following the success of the original title, Lemire began creating multiple new titles and characters. Titles such as Sherlock Frankenstein and The Legion of Evil, The Unbelievable Unteens and Barbalien: Red Planet have come to make up the three phases of The World of Black Hammer, which Lemire intends to put a bow on in 2023.
Interestingly enough, this isn’t the first time The World of Black Hammer has been in development by a studio. Legendary Entertainment struck a similar deal in 2018 for which Lemire created a significant amount of work for the project. In a 2018 interview with SyFy Wire, Lemire explained his need to help oversee the transition from page to screen, saying, “I decided with Black Hammer, because it’s so personal and near and dear to my heart, if I was ever going to option and develop it, I had to be intimately involved. As far as that adaptation, I do have to be the one that is creatively steering that ship, like the comic.“
It’s expected that Lemire will similarly oversee and potentially serve as an executive producer to oversee development on Amazon’s adaptation of his works, which we hear will include both films and series. With the deal only newly being struck, there’s no word yet on which project(s) will kick off the shared universe, much less when to expect a start of production.
