Rob Liefeld’s Prophet is getting a movie adaptation, courtesy of a script by Arrowverse producer Marc Guggenheim and Studio 8, Comicbook.com can now confirm. Last month we reported that Liefeld was teasing a Prophet movie announcement, after the comic creator took to Instagram with a post stating that, “The Prophet film was set up at Studio 8 last year and I have spoken at great lengths to the screenwriter on several occasions over these last 2 weeks as the film version takes shape. Things are looking really good, the progress is extremely heartening, and I’m excited for you guys to experience the new material.”
First debuting in Liefeld’s groundbreaking Youngblood comic series in 1992, John Prophet became a breakout hit all his own in the creator-owned Image Comics line of the ’90s and 2000s. If Youngblood was Liefeld’s vision of an Avengers-style superhero squad, Prophet was a twisted take on Captain America (with a very Thor-esque design aesthetic). His origin was that of a WWII-era homeless man taken and subjected to the super-soldier experiments of a time-traveling scientist from the future. The scientist (Horatio Wells) is tasked to create a living weapon for evil, but instead endows the soldier with a strong faith in God and a noble mission. Prophet is but in cryo-stasis to emerge as a secret weapon to help the evil force known as the Disciples. Instead, fate takes a turn when the Youngblood team accidentally discovers and awakens Prophet in the modern age. He instead becomes a hero for this day and age.
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As the character’s mythology grew in the comics, John Prophet became very different than Liefeld’s original take. First, it was discovered that Prophet had a Winter Soldier-esque experience as a mind-wiped killing machine in Vietnam. A 2010s reboot of the character by Image Comics and creative team Brandon Graham and Simon Roy, changed things even more drastically. The reboot sees Prophet make it into the distant future (10,000 years) and have to complete mission in a very sci-fi world of alien cultures and future technology. It also blew open the mythos to reveal that Prophet has many clones roaming the universe, and other such sci-fi concepts.
That’s all a lot of meat for Guggenheim and co. to work with. Deadline reports that the intention is to build an entire franchise around the character, which is very possible. A Prophet solo film can take place over several of the lifetimes the character has lived, from WWII to the acclaimed distant future stories. That path opens up doors to all kinds of other Image Comics properties, from Youngblood to (by some miracle) pieces of Todd McFarlane’s Spawn universe. Basically, it’s Guggenheim potentially doing for Image Comics films what he did using Arrow as the focal point for an entire DC TV Universe.
We’ll keep you updated on the status of the Prophet movie.
