Legendary’s Black Hammer Being Developed as a Shared Universe between Film and Television

Last Fall, Legendary Entertainment optioned the entire Black Hammer universe — from the minds of Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston — to adapt to live-action films and television shows. With the first project now in development, Lemire tells us the studio’s full intention is creating a shared universe between films and television, not unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe from Marvel Studios and Marvel Television.

“Legendary has optioned the entire universe, not just the one story,” Lemire tells ComicBook.com “It’s a very ambitious adaptation and I’m currently working on the first piece of that, writing the screenplay for the first project within what we hope could be a shared universe for film and television.”

When asked if that shared universe aspect of it would mean film characters could find themselves in television shows and vice versa, Lemire confirmed that’s the goal. At this point, he says, they treating the situation as if the “sky’s the limit” and not wanting to limit themselves with an ever-expanding comic property.

Having his hand in developing the live-action properties has been beneficial in more ways than one for Lemire, who’s already gotten a few ideas to introduce in later Black Hammer comics.

“That’s been cool, too, because you’re going back and looking at the earlier Black Hammer stories, and then finding ways to translate them to screen opens up new ideas that way,” the writer reflects. “There’s been a couple of things we’ve developed or I’ve developed for the film and television stuff now, that I’ve gone back and started working on comic projects based on some of those ideas. One is feeding into the other and back again in an interesting way that I didn’t expect.”

As it stands now, the entire shared universe is in the earliest stages of development, so release dates — or exact properties, for that matter — are too far out to speculate. It’s all dependent on Legendary even deciding to officially greenlight the projects and push them into production.

As for the Black Hammer comics universe, it continues to expand with plenty of projects in the works. In addition to the current ongoing series that serves as the foundation of the universe — Black Hammer: Age of Doom — Black Hammer ’45 just wrapped up its five-issue run this past week.

Black Hammer: Age of Doom #11 is due out June 26th while Black Hammer/Justice League: Hammer of Justice #1 hits comics stores July 10th.