J. Michael Straczynski’s Rising Stars has a movie deal

The independent comic book series Rising Stars has gotten a movie deal, and quite a bit of good could come from it.

Believe it or not, there are still comic book movies being made that have nothing to do with Marvel or DC’s big names. For the most part, there’s a reason you can’t remember any of them, but we may be getting a real winner in the near future, as Top Cow Productions’ Rising Stars has now been optioned for a movie.

The comic was created by J. Michael Straczynski, or JMS to his fans, the genius behind the groundbreaking science fiction series Babylon 5 and current co-runner with the Wachowskis of the Netflix series Sense8. It takes a wide scope over its 24 issue limited run, positing that over a hundred people who were in utero during a mysterious flash in the sky developed superpowers, and examines the various ways they choose to use them.

Naturally, any film adaptation is going to have to cut down on that setup tremendously, but I still have hope that by focusing on just a few of the characters we can still get a worthwhile movie out of it, with the comic still out there for anyone whose interest is piqued to discover the full story. Or maybe it could even become its own film series to give a full adaptation; there have been worse properties I could name that were able to be adapted that way.

Also notable is that the comic’s politics were quite forward thinking for the time, much as you’d expect from the man whose biggest success would be seen as an obvious criticism of the George W. Bush administration, if only it hadn’t ended in 1998. Most notable is perhaps the most progressive transgender character in comic book history, whose powers become much stronger when she’s presenting her true self. With the deplorable state of sexism and racism currently in nerd culture, a faithful adaptation could provide a quite needed wake up call.

In fact, my one real concern is that the comic contains several brilliant cases of playing with the format that will be difficult to impossible to replicate. The opening two-page image contrasts the power-giving light on one side and a sperm entering an egg on the other. One entire issue covers four separate characters whose story is told in full simultaneously in real time across four rows of panels. And my personal favorite, a man who can talk to ghosts appears to be sitting alone, until you turn the page and the ghost images and word balloons bleed through from where they’re printed in reverse on the other side of the page.

However, I remain quite optimistic as our one concrete piece of information about the adaptation is the best news that could possibly have come: JMS himself is writing the script. Thus far he only has one completed feature film script to his credit, the Clint Eastwood-directed true crime thriller Changeling, and I would love to see him finally get another one, which could possibly get him more mainstream success than ever before with how huge superhero movies are right now. The news was quite unexpected, and very welcome. Now let’s just see if anything comes of it.

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