While we anxiously await the return of Game of Thrones this April, another popular George R.R. Martin series is preparing to make the jump to the small screen. Wild Cards, the author’s popular 27-volume saga, has been set up at Hulu via Universal Cable Prods., where a writer’s room is being established to create two new shows based on the long-running series.
According to Deadline, both series will be written and executive produced by Andrew Miller (The Secret Code), while Martin will produce alongside Melinda Snodgrass and Vince Geradis.
The shared world of the Wild Cards diverged from our own on September 15, 1946 when an alien virus was released in the skies over Manhattan, and spread across an unsuspecting Earth. Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same.
The first volume of the Wild Cards series was published in 1986, and was a finalist for that year’s Hugo Award, ultimately losing to Alan Moore’s “Watchmen.” Translations and reprints of many of the Wild Cards books and stories have been published around the globe, in France, Germany, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Russia, Japan, Italy, and the United Kingdom. Comic books, graphic novels, and role-playing games have also chronicled the adventures of the aces and jokers of the WC universe.
Martin describes the series as follows: “Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games… but most of all it is a universe, as large and diverse and exciting as the comic book universes of Marvel and DC (though somewhat grittier, and considerably more realistic and more consistent), with an enormous cast of characters both major and minor. There are thousands of stories to be told in the world of the Wild Cards, and UCP hope to be able to tell many of them… Only one thing I can say for (almost) sure. You will be seeing Croyd Crenson, no matter shape the eventual show or shows ends up taking. It wouldn’t be Wild Cards without the Sleeper.”
