‘Static Shock’ Movie in Development
By George Robbins
This past weekend was a big weekend for DC fans everywhere because it was the first ever installment of DC FanDome. For those unaware of what that is, it is essentially a Comic-Con style convention that focused on DC intellectual properties. Due to the current global pandemic, the event could not be held in person so they made it an online only event that anybody would be able to join in on. Everything from panels to the selling of merchandise took place online to allow people the opportunity to get in on the action available to them. The end result of the previous weekend was that it ended up being an overall success.
New and upcoming projects were shown off at length and it gave everybody some things to look forward to over the next couple of years at least. There is plenty going on with DC right now and it means that there is a lot of opportunity for the DC franchise to become better than it was before. Some of the movies that they have made over the past few years just haven’t really done that well compared to how well they expected them to do. Everything we were shown, though, makes it seem like we are in for a lot of interesting projects over the coming years. One project that people weren’t really expecting to hear anything about was a film that is being made for the ‘Static Shock’ character.
The ‘Static Shock‘ comic book series was originally created by Milestone Comics which was a part of Milestone Media. The company was founded by a group of African-Americans artists which included Dwayne McDuffie, Denys Cowan, Michael Davis, and Derek T. Dingle in 1993. What they wanted to do was address the under-representation of racial minorities in superhero franchises and they succeeded with one series, ‘Static Shock.’ All of their comics were published and distributed by DC but the one that drew the most attention was the one featuring the titular character. The character of Static Shock became so popular that it even ended up becoming an animated kids show that was very popular during its time.
During DC FanDome this past weekend, there was a surprise panel where prolific filmmaker Reginald Hudlin revealed that there is a live-action ‘Static Shock’ movie in development. Back when the animated series was popular, there were plans for an animated movie that ended up being ultimately scrapped, but it seems like this may be a serious attempt to make the movie in the modern day. Hudlin revealed that while the movie is in development, it is still in the very early stages with no actors actually tied to the movie yet. With this aside though, it would be nice to eventually see this movie come to fruition given the significant impact the original series had on people growing up. Hopefully, more news about the movie will be coming in the near future.