Minor Threats, the hit comic book co-created by actor and comedian Patton Oswalt and screenwriter Jordan Blum, is headed to television.
Netflix is developing the live-action adaptation, with Oswalt and Blum to serve as writers, showrunners and executive producers. Scott Hepburn, the artist who drew and co-created the title, will also exec produce.
Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg will exec produce for Dark Horse Entertainment, the company that publishes the comic. Dark Horse has a first-look deal with Netflix, which is home to the long-running adaptation of its comic book Umbrella Academy.
In fact, the development dovetails nicely with Umbrella, whose fourth and final season hits Aug. 8 and like Minor Threats, offers a off-kilter take on super-heroics.
The acerbic Minor Threats centers on low-level supervillains who usually find themselves bound in front of a police station with a note saying, “Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Batman.”
The initial story arc subverted superhero convention, kicking off with the psychotic Stickman murder the young hero Kid Dusk, sidekick to Twilight City’s premier crime-fighter, the Insomniac. With that vigilante hero’s teammates turning the city into a police state in a desperate attempt to capture Stickman, small-time D-list villains find their lives turned upside down. Thus, with a bounty on Stickman’s head, a former villain assembles a ragtag team to find Stickman and kill him themselves.
A poke in the eye of superhero comics, the book, with its gritty and clever take on the superhero form, proved to be a big and surprise hit for Dark Horse when it debuted in August 2022. After the initial story, a sequel followed as well as two spinoffs, including Barfly, whose first issue hit stores earlier in July.
Netflix declined to comment.
Oswalt and Jordan previously created and showran Marvel’s stop-motion animated TV show, M.O.D.O.K., which streamed on Hulu. Blum was also co-exec producer on animated comedy American Dad, while Oswalt is a prolific actor, stand-up, and writer with quite frankly too many credits to mention.
Minor Threats cover
Courtesy of Dark Horse