DMZ: Ava DuVernay Shares First Look at HBO Pilot

The journey for DMZ from comics to television adaptation has been long as the Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli created series has been in various stages of development before unfortunately stalling out. Now WarnerMedia is fully committed to making it a reality as they’ve officially ordered a pilot for the series for their streaming service HBO Max and they’ve enlisted filmmaker Ava DuVernay to direct. The Academy Award and Emmy nominee took to Twitter today to confirm that production has officially begun on the series while also offering a first look at the series as cameras begin rolling. Check out the photo from the set below!

“DMZ is a special project to me as it marks a key collaboration with my company Array Filmworks, the excellent team at Warner Bros TV and the dynamo Roberto Patino,” DuVernay said before when the project was announced. “We’ve all worked diligently on this material, and I’ve witnessed Roberto in action. He’s insanely talented and cares about telling stories with maximum impact and imagination. I’m eager to share this one with DC fans.”

DMZ is set in a near-future America where a Second American Civil War has left Manhattan as a demilitarized zone (hence DMZ) that is destroyed and isolated from the rest of the world. Roberto Patino serves as the showrunner and writer for the adaptation.

The series will star Rosario Dawson as Alma, a medic “who saves lives while desperately searching for her lost son. As she contends with the gangs, militias, demagogues and warlords who control this lawless no man’s land, she becomes the unlikely source of what everyone has lost: hope.”

Also in the series will be Benjamin Bratt as the powerful gang leader Parco Delgado, “the popular — and deadly — leader of one of the most powerful gangs in the DMZ. He wants to rule the DMZ and will stop at nothing to secure that outcome. Delgado is known as a wildly magnetic, affable and equally influential man;” and Freddy Miyares as Skel, “the ruthless triggerman of one of the DMZ’s most powerful gangs, led by Parco Delgado. He is also a talented graffiti artist with a profound passion for art, which serves as his lasting connection to his humanity in a world where survival is predicated on power.”

DMZ originally ran for 72 issues from 2005 to 2012, and was one of Vertigo’s more prominent titles in the 2000s. At this time, DMZ has not been picked up for a full series order. HBO Max is set to launch in May.