With Marvel busy with its multi-phased marketing scheme based around Joss Whedon’s Avengers films, and DC twiddling their super-thumbs while the proposed Justice League franchise sits there and does nothing, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there are superheroes that lie beyond the two biggest companies. Still holding on for a Mystery Men sequel, Hollywood.
Critically acclaimed author Marcus Sakey is awaiting the upcoming release of the first novel in a proposed superpower-centered trilogy, and The Hollywood Reporter says producers Joe Roth and Palek Patel, most recently responsible for the big budget Oz the Great and Powerful, have already acquired the novel’s rights and have set up a deal with Legendary Pictures to adapt it into a feature. The novel, titled Brilliance, is set to be released on July 16, 2013.
It seems to start off like the Heroes series, when different people around the world, who are called “Brilliants,” start finding out they’ve developed a variety of superpowers, which has affected one percent of people since 1980. One of them is a federal agent whose specific power allows him to find other brilliants, and he’s set to take on his toughest challenge when a rogue brilliant with civil war on the mind forces the agent to go against everything he knows in order to save the world. Sounds exciting enough, right? The title is a tad too reminiscent of Bryan Michael Bendis’ 2012 superpowered teen comic, titled Brilliant, which followed a similar sort of premise. But you won’t find me suing anyone.
Sakey is perhaps best known for his quality thrillers The Blade Itself, which Ben Affleck has been attached to for years, and Good People, which last had James Franco set to star.
