Steven DeKnight wants to make a movie based on Sheriff of Babylon, the gritty war drama from writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads. The series, set during the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq in 2004, “deals in conspiracy, betrayal and heroism in one of the most dangerous places in the world,” according to its synopsis. King drew inspiration for the series from his time as an intelligence officer for the CIA during the Iraq War, and while King had written spies and intelligence fiction before in novels and the Grayson series from DC You, Sheriff was the first title King ever had to run by the government to make sure he was not giving too much away.
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DeKnight responded to a thread about Sheriff on Twitter, dropping in with “I’m STILL trying to get the tights to adapt that into a feature. Will never give up!”
“If you’re a comic book fan, this is Scalped and Preacher set in Iraq a year after the invasion,” King explained back when the series was launching. “If you’re just a fan of pop culture in general, think of this as the new HBO series and this is the thing everyone’s going to watch on Sunday nights, and then on Monday everyone’s going to be like, “Holy s–t, what happened? Did you see that? I can’t believe it,” and that you can write a thousand think pieces on. It’s supposed to be one of those hour dramas that seem to drive our culture today.”
Not long after it wrapped, King admitted that he had written a “season 2” for the comic, but that he couldn’t make it a reality until he and Gerads could get some time off together to work on it.
“I wrote it, it’s done, it’s in the bag,” King said in 2016. “In my opinion, no one should work on Sheriff that’s not named Mitch Gerads. I’m working on Mister Miracle with him right now; we’ll see how that goes. Maybe he’ll be too popular an artist and he’ll just want to do Batman or Wolverine or something, It’s up to Mitch, because it’s written, but nobody will ever draw a page except for Mitch.”
Would you get excited about a Sheriff of Babylon movie? Let us know in the comments.
