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Milestone Comics, a recently rebooted DC Comics imprint for Dark Creators, Artists and Stories, has just announced that it is an animated film. Award-winning writer Brandon Thomas, who wrote the critically acclaimed series Excellency, The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury, and Material: Season 1, is already on board for the new animated film, according to the panel. The official announcement was made by Reggie Hudlin of Milestone, former chairman of Entertainment for Black Entertainment Television (BET), and Milestone co-founder Denys Cowan, who was part of the original Milestone team, during the Saturday session. DC FanDome online event.
The Milestone animated film will feature several characters from the Milestone universe. The footprint also houses Static shock, a character who is also getting a new feature film to be produced by Black Panther star Michael B. Jordan through his Warner Bros.-based production company, Outlier. Almost two decades ago, the world first met Virgil Hawkins, a teenage boy who transforms into a superhero with electric powers after being exposed to toxic gases, on the small screen of the Static shock 2000-2005 animated series on WB Network and The Cartoon Network. Also in the Milestone universe are heroes like Icon and Rocket and Hardware, who recently returned to the pages of the comics in Icon and Rocket: Season 1 by Hudlin, Leon Chills, Doug Braithwaite, Andrew Currie and Brad Anderson and Material: Season 1 by Thomas, Cowan, Bill Sienkiewicz and Chris Sotomayor.
Distributed by DC Comics, Milestone Media Inc. is the country’s largest black-owned comic book company, first launched in 1992. According to the company’s website, Milestone produced an average of eight titles per month and sold over 10 million copies in the six years. the imprint was active, closing in 1998. After the sudden death of comic book and animation icon Dwayne McDuffie in 2011, Milestone Media co-founders Hudlin, Cowan and Derek Dingle decided to honor his legacy as a pioneer in efforts to diversify the comic book industry by relaunching Milestone and opening scholarship opportunities to young creators.
Kids’ WB launched the Static shock cartoon in the fall of 2000, and the series immediately took second place in the 6 to 11-year-old boys category in ratings. The series, which was produced and directed by Cowan, also won Emmy and Humanitas nominations for social responsibility. “The show touched on a variety of interesting issues,†said Sander Schwartz, agent for Warner Bros. Animation, in a 2003 interview with Variety. “It takes so much, and in a way that’s not judgmental.” Warner Bros. Animation and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will once again be in charge of Milestone characters on screen, and it looks like the network is hoping for a similar response from audiences.
At Saturday’s DC FanDome event, even more information about the future of Milestone superheroes was revealed, which will strengthen McDuffie’s legacy, including The Milestone Initiative. Created in partnership with Ally Bank, the initiative will help the next generation of comic book creators bring their pens to the page through a training program at DC Comics. For those creators selected to participate, they will have the chance to attend a week-long seminar at the DC offices in Burbank, followed by an eight-week training course to be held online through the Kubert School for cartoon and graphic art. This news comes to us from the Hollywood Reporter.
Topics: Static Shock, DC FanDome
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