Prophet: Marc Guggenheim Working on the Second Draft of Rob Liefeld Adaptation

Marc Guggenheim, best known for his work on TV series like Arrow and Trollhunters, is headed back to the big screen for the first time in a while. Beyond just a Trollhunters movie, he’s also writing both a Jackpot film for Sony — bringing a character he wrote in the comics to the big screen as the studio continues to exploit as much Spider-Man-adjacent IP as the market will bear — and the upcoming Rob Liefeld adaptation Prophet. Since Guggenheim’s association with the project has been made public, Liefeld has repeatedly taken to social media to express how happy he is with the current script.

Now, Guggenheim says that he is working on the second draft. During Storytelling Across Media panel streamed on the Comic Con International website today, Guggenheim said that he remains really enthusiastic about the project, praising Liefeld for helping to keep everyone excited.

“Rob’s been really really kind. I’m having a blast working on it,” Guggenheim said during the panel. “It’s a great property, it’s been a great project, Rob is a delight. His enthusiasm is incredibly infectious. So that’s been a lot of fun. I’m in the process of starting my second draft as we speak.”

John Prophet, originally an adversary in the Liefeld-created Youngblood, was something of a “what if Captain America, but violent?” story. Prophet was a homeless man in the ’40s, who ended up being part of a government-funded super-soldier program. It worked, but the process also made him mentally unstable, and the science of the time could not keep his volatility and rage under control.

Where Captain America went into a de facto cryostasis after seemingly dying during a World War II mission, Prophet was put into stasis by his creator, springing back to “life” almost fifty years later and becoming an antihero.

Originally inspired by Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spielberg, Prophet had a brush with the big screen in the ’90s, when TriStar Pictures optioned the rights. They let it lapse, though, and it wasn’t until 2018 that Studio 8 optioned the property and began developing it in earnest. With the massive success of the Liefeld-created Deadpool in the movies, the studio tapped Guggenheim to pen the adaptation. It is likely that the movie will get production off the ground in 2021.

You can check out more of the SAM interviews posted today at the Comic-Con website or YouTube channel.