Acclaimed Dark Fantasy Comic Confirms Live-Action Adaptation (From a DCU Star)

There is a new movie coming based on a lesser-known fantasy comic book series, and a DCU star has her hands in the production. Viola Davis has been a huge part of the DCU since before James Gunn took over the production side of the company. She appeared in several movies, including as Amanda Waller in Suicide Squad, while Zack Snyder was still running things. She reprised her role as Waller in Gunn’s The Suicide Squad and had small appearances in Black Adam and Peacemaker. However, this comic book production has nothing to do with a major company like Marvel or DC, and it might be her most personal foray into the genre.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Viola Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions will make a movie out of the Afro-fantasy graphic novel The Untamed: A Sinner’s Prayer. The comic book series is a revenge thriller created by Sebastian A. Jones, and it was released independently. Jones has been making comics in the franchise for 10 years through his own label, Stranger Comics, and he will also outline the script and serve as the movie’s director.

While Viola Davis is involved, she is not assured to appear in the movie since the main character is a man known as The Stranger and a younger orphan named Niobe. However, Davis did write the forward for Jones’s original Niobe: She is Life graphic novel in 2017. “When Sebastian shared this incredible narrative with us over ten years ago, we knew then that the inclusive fantasy world of Asunda would resonate with audiences on a global scale,” Davis and Tennon said in a statement. “We believe that everyone is ready for a hero like Niobe, a badass Black woman whom Sebastian has brilliantly crafted to storm the world.”

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What to Expect From Untamed

The Untamed sounds very familiar to people who love spaghetti Westerns like the Man with No Name trilogy or the older Akira Kurosawa samurai movies like Yojimbo, on which A Fistful of Dollars was based. An unnamed Stranger shows up in the lawless town of Oasis, and he has seven days to collect the seven souls responsible for the murder of his wife and child. Thanks to an unholy deal he made, if he fails, bad things will happen. However, when he meets a young orphan named Niobe, he might find his redemption.

This sounds a lot like the classic Clint Eastwood movies, where a stranger comes into town, in both the Dollars Trilogy and his later supernatural releases like Pale Rider, while also sharing a lot in common with Kurosawa’s movies about traveling ronin, but with a supernatural twist. “My goal has always been to create a poetic and cinematic drama wrapped up in a badass vengeance tale with the world at stake,“ Jones said.

This is also a series with a built-in, dedicated audience. Rather than publish the book with a major company or creator-owned publishers like Image Comics, Jones used Kickstarter and created his books using crowdfunding. He has raised $631,602 so far for his stories in Asunda, and the last round of fundraising brought in over $100,000. With such a dedicated fanbase and Viola Davis giving her support, this is a comic adaptation worth looking out for.

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