While today brought the potential death of one DC Comics TV show, another one has risen up in its place to potentially become much bigger and better. Against most odds, we're finally getting the long-gestating live-action adaptation of Teen Titans, based on the popular comic book superhero team. No pilots here, as Titans was ordered straight-to-series and is set to make its debut in 2018. But where it will show up may surprise you.
Four years in the making, Titans is no doubt an important project to everyone at DC Entertainment and Warner Bros. Television, and as such, the companies are using the teen-based series to launch an all-new digital service aimed specifically at mega-fans of DC-branded media. That's pretty huge, and hopefully implies that WB and DC spare no costs when putting this project together, both when it comes to the cast and the special effects.
Get pumped, because we're going to get a live-action Dick Grayson in our lives next year, and Titans will center on the young vigilante has he steps out of the shadow of Batman's cape (and car and cave) and founds a new team of fearless ass-kickers. Unfortunately, the announcement wasn't big on details about what to expect from the Teen Titans, and we didn't even get a full rundown of the other heroes we can expect to see, although Starfire and Raven are specifically named. One has to wonder how the lineup will fare with some of its comic book members like Kid Flash and Speedy currently on other live-action series. (I also wonder how to work a similar Teen Titans Go! spinoff out of this thing down the road.)
Understandably, Titans won't feature any comic book newbies behind the scenes. The series, or at least that first episode, will be written by Arrow-verse co-creator Greg Berlanti, DC Entertainment President and comic writing genius Geoff Johns and Oscar-winning screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), and that super-squad of co-developers should be enough to get everyone jazzed.
Fans hadn't really heard anything palatable about Titans ever since early 2016 when it was passed on at TNT. And that happened after the network had kept hopeful fans on a line for quite a while without offering up any updates. So if the project is powerful enough to now warrant the creation of its own streaming service -- which isn't really what happened, but we're pretending -- then it will likely blow away any version that would have appeared on TNT anyway, right? Maybe.
As previously mentioned, Titans is set to debut on DC Entertainment's upcoming digital service at some point in 2018, with more exciting announcements to come in the future. In the meantime, you can head to our midseason premiere schedule and our summer TV guide to see all the shows that will get here a lot sooner than 2018.
