Robert Kirkman’s Skybound to Remake ‘The Villainess’

Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment, the company behind The Walking Dead, will adapt Korean [...]

Robert Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment, the company behind The Walking Dead, will adapt Korean film The Villainess for television.

As first reported by Deadline, Skybound teams with Next Entertainment World's Contents Panda on the project, remaking the 2017 film centered around a trained assassin-turned-South Korean government agent who seeks revenge when dark revelations about her past come to light.

Jung Byung-gil, who directed the feature film that received a four-minute standing ovation at its Cannes Film Festival premiere, returns to direct the pilot episode.

"Jung Byung-gil has quickly established himself as one of the world's great action directors, and we're incredibly excited to be working with him to expand the world of The Villainess into a thrilling international series," said Bryan and Sean Furst, Skybound Entertainment's Co-Presidents of TV and Film.

"We expect that The Villainess, which made a successful debut in Cannes Film Festival, will bring special entertainment and fun to the audience with its rich stories of the genre, and through the partnership with Skybound Entertainment, already well-known for The Walking Dead," said Contents Panda's Kim Jae-min.

Founded by Kirkman and David Alpert, longtime producer of The Walking Dead and spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, Skybound previously announced plans to adapt Korean pre-apocalyptic drama Five Year as a 16-episode television series and in 2018 debuted the comic book-centric documentary Secret History of Comics on AMC, home to the live-action Walking Dead brand.

The animated Super Dinosaur, inspired by the comic book of the same name published through Image Comics' Skybound imprint, quietly premiered on Canada's Teletoon in September. The company most recently debuted Dead by Dawn for Nat Geo Wild earlier this week.

Kirkman and Skybound inked a major overall deal with Amazon nearly two summers ago, giving the online retailer giant a first-look deal that will bring adult superhero comic Invincible to life in the form of an animated series.

The creator said during San Diego Comic-Con last July that series will be "as violent as the comic book series," with the animated hourlong adult drama's pilot episode penned by Kirkman. Invincible will debut on Amazon's video service at a later date.

The Walking Dead next resumes its ninth season when it returns to AMC Sunday, February 10.

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