It’s truly about time for a Mexican cyborg to take over our TVs. Now that may actually happen because Hulu is dipping its toes in the world of Marvel TV shows with Runaways. The streaming video service ordered a pilot, and a full season’s worth of scripts should it decide to pick up the show, as Deadline first reported.
Based on Brian K. Vaughan and Filipino-Canadian artist Adrian Alphona’s 2003 comic book of the same name, the show will tell the story of a group of teens whose supervillain parents belong to a squad called The Pride. Marvel describes it as “the story of six diverse teenagers who can barely stand each other but who must unite against a common foe — their parents.”
As MTV noted, one of Runaways‘ strengths – besides its popularity with comic book fans – is the diverse makeup of the superhero team in terms of race, gender, and sexual orientation. Mexican-American Victor Mancha, the son of a former drug mule named Marianella Mancha, is one of the group’s members. His father, whom you may have heard of, is the psychopathic robot Ultron featured in the 2015 Avengers movie.
After the Avengers defeated Ultron, his remains ended up in a landfill. Marianella found his head in Los Angeles. The two grew close, and they began to work together. She told him she couldn’t bare children or adopt (because of her criminal record). So he agreed to give her a child if she helped him find a body. Ultron created Victor through a combination of her DNA and cybernetics. Obviously, as evil robots do, he programmed Victor with the specific end goal of infiltrating and destroying the Avengers.
It’s too soon for a casting announcement or a release date for the live-action series. However, the little news that already exists is encouraging. According to Deadline, the creative forces behind the show will be Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage. This is good news for fans of the series, as the pair is responsible for successful shows like The O.C. and Gossip Girl. Although they don’t have experience with comic book adaptations, Schwartz wrote an initial script for X-Men: First Class before director Bryan Singer brought on a different writer.
ABC and Netflix have had varying degrees of success with shows set in and around the Marvel Cinematic Universe, like Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Daredevil, and Jessica Jones. Netflix in particular has benefitted from the ability to make its shows much darker, which is a perk that should also apply to Hulu.