Back in December of 2010 it was announced that Syfy and Universal Pictures would be joining forces to create Syfy Films, with an aim at producing one or two movies a year with relatively small budgets of $5 million to $25 million each.
Now comes word that the new venture has made their first acquisition, the ongoing superhero anthology titled Wild Cards. Created by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, and a group of New Mexico authors largely inspired by the role-playing game Superworld, Wild Cards is set in a post-World War II alternate history where a virus released over the skies of New York City wipes out 90% of all people, 9% are turned into mutated creatures, and 1% obtain superpowers.
With that base, a long line of stories from numerous different authors have been born. Most of the releases consisted of multiple short stories, while some were mosaic, with multiple authors writing their own individual storylines that would flow together into one linear story, and some were full novels written by one author.
The anthology began in 1987 and has continued on over the years through four different publishers. Currently Wild Cards resides at Tor, who has plans for future installments locked in place.
Speaking on the property, Martin said:
We had a love of comics books and superheroes that we grew up on. but we approached the material differently. We wanted to do it in a grittier, more adult manner than what we were seeing in the ’80s. It’s something that many other people have been doing in the decades ever since.
One of the things we have going is the sense of history. The comics in the mainstream are doing retcons [retroactive continuity] all the time. [Heroes] get married, then one day, the publisher changes his mind, and then they’re no longer married. To my mind, it’s very frustrating. [Our stories] are in real time. It’s a world that is changing in parallel to our own.
As for what storyline from this wealth of fictional material will be used for the first Syfy Films title, that has yet to be decided.
Snodgrass will be writing the screenplay, and she and Martin will also act as executive producers.
[Source: Heat Vision]
