Gerard Way’s Umbrella Academy Reportedly Headed To Netflix

Umbrella Academy lovers, it is time to unite. For years now, Hollywood has tried to get a live-action adaptation of Gerard Way’s award-winning series underway, and it seems like Netflix is determined to take on the story. According to a new report, it seems like Umbrella Academy will be getting a television series over on Netflix.

Splash Report just published a piece regarding the Umbrella Academy series. The site says sources have informed them “an announcement will come shortly” and maybe even land at San Diego Comic Con later this month.

Umbrella Academy has yet to lift its live-action plans off the ground. The series first announced plans for an adaptation back in 2015. Universal Pictures once looked at the series for possible movie fodder, but screenwriter Jeremy Slater saw the project shifted to the small-screen. During an interview with Collider last year, the writer had this update to give on Umbrella Academy:

“I definitely wrote the pilot for The Umbrella Academy. I think it’s really exciting. I think it’s really surprising and funny. I took the job because I’m such an immense fan of what Gerard [Way] and Gabriel [Ba] did with that book. It’s one of those things where I would rather be the guy to screw it up than sit back and let someone else come in and do the bad adaptation. So, I was really adamant about taking the job, but the only way I was going to do it was if I could make it weird and make it true to the spirit of the book. There’s a lot of weird shit in The Umbrella Academy, and it would be very easy to sand down some of those weird edges and make it more familiar to American audiences. I’m fighting very hard to not let that happen. We’re shopping around the pilot, at the moment. We’re trying to find the right home for it and trying to find someone as excited as we are.”

Well, if new reports are right, then it looks like Netflix will be the right home for Umbrella Academy.

If you are not familiar with Umbrella Academy, then you have some time to get acquainted. The series ran between 2007-2013 under Dark Horse, and it is set in an alternate history where John F. Kennedy was never assassinated. The comic follows an estranged family of heroes from the Umbrella Academy. The gang must reunite to save the world after having gone their separate ways, and Umbrella Academy managed to nab an Eisner Award in 2008 for its limited run.

The synopsis for Umbrella Academy‘s first volume can be read below:

“Once, the Umbrella Academy was unstoppable. Under the tutelage of their guardian and mentor, Dr. Reginald Hargreeves, its members spent their childhoods fighting evil and honing their extraordinary gifts.

Until something went terribly wrong.

Now, nine years later, the estranged members of the Umbrella Academy are reunited by the death of the only parent they’ve ever known and the rise of a new and terrible threat. Will they be able to overcome their history for long enough to save the world-one more time?”