Lemire's Underwater Welder Optioned for Film

CBR

By Rob Cave

Published Mar 3, 2017

Ryan Gosling is part of the team that has picked up Lemire's acclaimed comic -- but will he be taking an on-screen role in its film adaptation?

"The Underwater Welder," writer/artist Jeff Lemire's critically-acclaimed comic about father/son relationships and supernatural goings-on at the bottom of the sea, may soon be making its way to theaters.

The Top Shelf-published work has now been optioned by Oscar-nominee Ryan Gosling, producer Ken Kao, and the film production Anonymous Content, according to a press release form the publisher, with Lemire, Top Shelf Editor–in–Chief Chris Staros and IDW CEO and Publisher Ted Adams attached as executive producers.

There is no word yet on possible casting for the film, although Gosling's name being attached does raise the prospect that he might play a central on-screen role in the adaptation.

"Underwater Welder" is just the latest in a growing raft of Lemire projects to be optioned -- in July 2016, the offbeat superhero/coming-of-age story "Plutona" that Lemire created with Emi Lenox, was also picked up by a consortium that included Kao.

The cartoonist has also had two of his stories optioned by Sony; “A.D.: After Death,” which Lemire created with Scott Snyder ("Batman") as a three-issue Image Comics limited series -- following a man who exists in a world that has found the genetic cure for death -- in addition to "Descender" -- a sci-fi tale of a lifelike artificial boy named TIM-21, whose machine DNA may hold the key to the origin of robots that have decimated entire planets -- that Lemire created with Dustin Nguyen, which is currently in development.