Rick Remender and Wes Craig’s Deadly Class, which was announced as being under development for television at the last San Diego Comic Con by Marvel golden boys the Russo brothers, has been optioned to pilot by Syfy, according to a report in Deadline.
The comic, which follows a group of teenagers as they attend a high school for assassins and make their way through San Francisco’s late ’80s punk scene, has been published by Image Comics since 2014. The book focuses on Marcus Lopez, a homeless Nicaraguan teen who gets recruited for the school. His first decision as a student is to kill Ronald Reagan, and that’s somehow the least bad decision he makes in the entire book.
The newly-ordered pilot will be written by Remender and Miles Feldstott. Adam Targum, lately of Banshee and Outcast, will showrun, while Lee Toland Krieger, who directed a number of episodes of Riverdale, will helm the pilot.
The show has strong source material to draw from, both narratively and aesthetically. Craig’s art looks like a cross between David Mazzuchelli on Batman: Year One and Frank Miller on Daredevil. Colourist Lee Loughridge gives every scene a distinctive look and mood, and Remender is a master at cutting his schmaltz with cynicism and his cynicism with genuine, heartfelt emotion. If the pilot is half as good as the first trade of Deadly Class, the show should be very good indeed.
No air date has been announced yet.
More as we have it.