Hiram Garcia, co-producer of Warner Bros.' upcoming Dwayne Johnson-led DC Extended Universe film Black Adam, says his dream project would be a film adaptation of the classic DC Elseworlds tale Kingdom Come.
Garcia -- the president of Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions, which is producing Black Adam alongside New Line Cinema, FlynnPictureCo. and DC Films -- discussed Kingdom Come during a recent interview with Collider. "Look, I think the dream project that's something we've always spoken about at Seven Bucks, we would love to make someday, which is a tougher ambition due to, obviously, IP and rules and so forth, but always been obsessed with Kingdom Come, the Mark Waid/Alex Ross joint that those guys did," he said.
"I think that storyline was always so compelling," Garcia continued. "We've always envisioned it as kind of an epic, multi-film saga. I think that's something we've always dreamed of being able to do. If there was ever a dream project, and not trying to start a fire where it's like we're gunning after that, because it's just pie in the sky, you'd love to be able to tell the story, and I always admired that story of the juxtaposition of old-school heroes versus new-school heroes and how they clash and a world so divided in terms of how they view what is justice now and what was it and what should it be. It's always just always something very compelling in the big, cataclysmic mash-up of old versus new. That's something that, look, in a perfect world, we could do it, would love to do it."
Written by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, illustrated by Ross and lettered by Todd Klein, Kingdom Come was originally published as a four-part limited series under DC Comics' Elseworlds imprint in 1996. A metacommentary on the gritty comics boom of the 1990s, Kingdom Come is an alternate-reality story that pits the aging, out-of-touch superheroes of old against a new generation of dangerous, irresponsible vigilantes -- with potentially world-ending results.
While there has yet to be a full-blown Kingdom Come adaptation, Waid and Ross' comic has been referenced in live-action DC projects. For example The CW's 2019-2020 Arrowverse crossover event "Crisis on Infinite Earths" saw Brandon Routh reprise his role as Clark Kent/Superman from the 2006 film Superman Returns, this time sporting the Man of Steel's Kingdom Come attire.
It was also as part of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" that legendary Bruce Wayne/Batman voice actor Kevin Conroy played the character in live-action for the first time. In "Crisis," Conroy portrayed an aging Bruce Wayne who was confined to a robotic exoskeleton, not unlike the one the character was forced to wear in Kingdom Come. Finally, the 2020 DCEU feature film Wonder Woman 1984 saw Gal Gadot's Diana Prince don the character's iconic gold armor, which first appeared in Kingdom Come.
It remains to be seen if Garcia and the rest of the Seven Bucks team will get their wish of adapting Kingdom Come at some point down the road, though the company certainly has a solid slate of upcoming DC films in the meantime. In addition to Black Adam, which is due to hit theaters on July 29, 2022, Seven Bucks is producing DC League of Super-Pets and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which are scheduled for release on May 20, 2022 and June 2, 2023, respectively. Whereas Black Adam stars Johnson as the titular anti-hero, League of Super-Pets stars the ex-WWE star as the voice of Krypto the Superdog. Seven Bucks previously had a hand in 2019's Shazam!.
Black Adam is slated for release on July 29, 2022.
Source: Collider