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Tiny Onion Kicks Off a Slate of Adult Animation with The Woods and Brings Casey Gonzalez on as Director of Multimedia

The Woods

Led by CEO James Tynion IV, Tiny Onion is kicking off the production house’s robust adult animation slate with an adaptation of Tynion’s The Woods, based on the award-winning comic book series published by BOOM! Studios. The acclaimed sci-fi horror comics were co-created by Tynion and artist Michael Dialynas. To launch the animation slate, Tiny Onion is bringing aboard Casey Gonzalez as Director of Multimedia to oversee development for the company’s animated projects.

GLAAD Media Award-winning comic book series which debuted in 2014, The Woods tells the story of an ordinary high school in suburban Milwaukee, WI, which is suddenly transported into the midst of an alien forest in an uncharted corner of the universe. With no sign of why they were taken there, or what threats lurk in the dark woods surrounding their school, the story follows a group of students determined to figure out how to survive, and more importantly, how to get home. Tiny Onion has optioned the property from BOOM! Studios. The animated series will see Tynion and Dialynas executive producing for Tiny Onion. Stephen Christy and Mette Norkjaer will executive produce the series for BOOM! Studios.

The Woods will be Gonzalez’s first project as Director of Multimedia at Tiny Onion since joining the team in December. Previous to Tiny Onion, she spent a decade working alongside animation industry legend Fred Seibert (Adventure Time, Bee and Puppycat) as his VP of Development at FredFilms, where she developed original cartoons, including the viral short The Summoning, which is being adapted into a three book series for Oni Press. 

Casey Gonzalez

Gonzalez began her career in publishing, editing bestselling graphic novels for First Second and helping launch the acclaimed Science Comics series while shepherding New York Times bestselling titles such as Eisner Award winner Battling Boy, Hugo Award nominated book The Divine, and Green Book Award winner Coral Reefs. She later transitioned into the role of Head Writer and Producer at Frederator, where she launched the popular anime vertical Get in the Robot, and subsequently at Crunchyroll, the world’s largest anime streaming service. At Tiny Onion, Gonzalez looks forward to uniting her love of comics with her experience shaping top tier shows.

The Woods is a part of an expanding adult animation slate that also includes an animated adaptation of Tynion’s Image Comics horror sci-fi series W0RLDTR33 in development at Netflix. Co-created by Fernando Blanco and colored by multi Eisner Award-winning colorist Jordie Belliare, W0RLDTR33 tells the story of a dark evil within the internet that may destroy humanity. Tynion and Blanco will serve as Executive Producers on the series with Ashley Cardiff (Fear The Walking Dead) set as Showrunner and Executive Producer. Sean Buckelew of Green Street Pictures (Common Side Effects, Scavenger’s Reign) will also serve as Executive Producer and the team has just brought on Guillaume Dousse of Æsten studio (Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, Flee) to lead visual development and art direction for the series.

W0RLDTR33

Additionally, Tiny Onion is developing an adult animated comedy series The Tipsy Dragon with production company Irony Point. The series is being developed by Daniel Powell (Ugly Americans). RJ Fried, Mike Leech, and Zach Smilovitz (Our Cartoon President) are attached to write and help produce. An original concept from Tynion, The Tipsy Dragon is set in a tavern in a world where the age of heroes and legends is long past—and its barkeep and patrons couldn’t care less about their supposed role in an ancient battle between good and evil just outside their doorstep. 

Tynion and BOOM! Studios are also teaming up with iconic horror production company Blumhouse for an adult animated television series and a live-action feature film based on Tynion and Werther Dell’Edera’s record breaking, award-winning, and global best-selling series Something is Killing the Children. Set in a world where children can see monsters, but adults cannot, Something is Killing the Children tells the story of Erica Slaughter, a monster hunter from a mysterious organization more concerned with keeping the secret of monsters from the world than saving their victims. The animated series will be adapted and executive produced by Tynion, with Dell’Edera serving as Co-Executive Producer and visual development consultant. Stephen Christy will executive produce the series for BOOM! Studios, with Mette Norkjaer and Adam Yoelin serving as Co-Executive Producer.

Tiny Onion is backed by a seed investment from Lyrical Media, the Los Angeles and New York-based company that develops, produces, and finances unique stories across multi-media formats, including film, television, video games, and graphic novels. It was recently announced that Lyrical Media has launched Lyrical Animation to tap into global demand for adult animation, with an emphasis on animated features. Lyrical Animation is headed by seasoned Animation industry veterans Jacob Robinson, Daniel Dominguez, and Brad Graeber, and has many projects in development including an adaptation of the video game Death Stranding. Tiny Onion will be working closely with Lyrical Animation on its animation slate.

Something is Killing the Children Lands at Blumhouse for Film and Animation

BOOM! Studios and Blumhouse Productions have announced that Blumhouse has secured the film and television rights to James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera’s record breaking, award-winning, and global best-selling series Something is Killing the Children. Set in a world where children can see monsters, but adults cannot, Something is Killing the Children tells the story of Erica Slaughter, a monster hunter from a mysterious organization more concerned with keeping the secret of monsters from the world than saving their victims.

Blumhouse is set to simultaneously develop the property as a live-action feature film and an adult animated television series, with the animated series to be adapted and executively produced by co-creator James Tynion IV, with fellow co-creator Werther Dell’Edera serving as Co-Executive Producer and visual development consultant.

BOOM! Studios’ Stephen Christy, along with James Tynion IV will produce the feature film, with Adam Yoelin and Mette Norkjaer serving as Executive Producers. Werther Dell’Edera will co-produce.

The overwhelming success has allowed BOOM! Studios to commit to at least a 100-issue run for Something is Killing the Children, and at New York Comic-Con in 2025 it was announced that a new event series Fall of the House of Slaughter leading up to the release of the landmark 50th issue in 2026.

Something is Killing the Children Vol. 1

A Vicious Circle lands at Universal Pictures

A Vicious Circle #1

Universal Pictures has landed the rights to A Vicious Circle, the genre-defining graphic storytelling event from legendary artist Lee Bermejo and acclaimed writer Mattson Tomlin, with Proximity Media and BOOM! Studios producing.

Mattson Tomlin is set to adapt the screenplay. Ryan Coogler, Sev Ohanian, and Zinzi Coogler will produce through their Proximity Media. Rebecca Cho will executive produce and oversee the project for Proximity Media along with Zetra Evans for Proximity.

Stephen Christy serves as producer for BOOM! Studios, with Adam Yoelin as executive producer and Mette Norkjaer as co-producer. Senior Vice President of Production Development Ryan Jones will oversee the project for the studio.

Shawn Thacker is a trained assassin who seeks revenge on the only other man who shares his unique affliction—each life they take forces them both to travel through time between vastly different past and future eras. Spanning from 22nd century Tokyo to 1950s New Orleans to the Cretaceous period and beyond, these two mortal rivals find themselves locked in a battle of wills that spans millions of years, all to alter the course of history…

This announcement comes ahead of the publication of A Vicious Circle #3, the final part of the series, on-sale August 7, 2024.

Daniel Dae Kim, Ming-Na Wen, Brandon Soo Hoo, Debra Wilson, and More Set to Star in Netflix’s Mech Cadets

Netflix Mech Cadets

BOOM! Studios and Polygon Pictures, Inc. have announced the star studded cast for the upcoming 3D animated series, Mech Cadets, streaming globally on Netflix August 10, 2023. Adapted from the bestselling BOOM! Studios comic series Mech Cadet Yu by acclaimed AAPI creators Greg Pak and Takeshi Miyazawa, the series is set fifty years in the future, after a terrifying alien species attacked our planet, and follows teenager Stanford Yu who works as a janitor at the Sky Corps Military Academy. But he’s only dreamed of one thing his entire life — to pilot a Robo Mech, giant robots from outer-space who came to our aid. When he finally gets his shot, Stanford and his classmates must put aside all personal differences and work together as a team in order to defend humanity against a new alien invasion.

The ten-episode series hails from Japanese Animation studio Polygon Pictures Inc., whose credits include Star Wars: Resistance, Apple TV+’s Emmy Award-winning Stillwater, and Love, Death, + Robots for Netflix. The first episode of the series is an official selection of 2023’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival in the TV Films Competition category.

Brandon Soo Hoo stars as Stanford Yu, a scrappy teenage underdog working as a janitor at Sky Corps who dreams of being a Robo Pilot.

Daniel Dae Kim plays General Aiden Park, the battle-hardened leader of Sky Corps Academy and the Mech Cadet program. As a father of one of the cadets and a General he expects nothing short of perfection from his daughter and his soldiers.

Ming-Na Wen plays Dolly Yu, Stanford’s loving, if a bit overprotective, mother and the calm head of the janitorial team at Sky Corps.

Debra Wilson plays Chief Max, a former Robo pilot, head of Engineering at Sky Corps, and mentor to the trainees.

Rounding out the cast are: Aparna Brielle as Ava Patel, Victoria Grace as Olivia Park, Josh Sundquist as Frank Olivetti, Anairis Quinones as Maya Sanchez, and James Yaegashi as Captain Tanaka.

Aaron Lam serves as head writer and executive producer for the series. Tohru Patrick Awa is the supervising director. Mech Cadets is executive produced by Shuzo John Shiota and Jack Liang for Polygon Pictures, Inc., and Stephen Christy and Ross Richie for BOOM! Studios. BOOM!’s Mette Norkjaer is co-executive producer of the series and Polygon’s Bill E. Miller serves as producer. 

Print copies of Mech Cadet Yu Volumes 1-3 are available at local comic book shops and bookstores worldwide. Digital copies can be purchased from all major content providers, including comiXology, iBooks, Google Play, and Kindle. 

Sam Davies and BOOM! Studios’ HexVet Gets animated at Nickelodeon

HexVet

Nickelodeon is bringing the magical world of Willows Whisper to life with the greenlight of HexVet, a brand-new animated preschool series based on the eponymous BOOM! Studios graphic novels by Sam Davies. The CG and 2D-hybrid adventure-comedy series (20 episodes) follows unlikely best friends Nan and Clarion as they navigate life’s weird and wacky challenges, while apprenticing to be magical veterinarians for fantastical creatures. Paramount Consumer Products will lead consumer products cross-category licensing worldwide for the HexVet property. HexVet will launch 2023 in the U.S. and continue to roll out internationally.

As HexVets in training, Nan and Clarion are ready to tackle medical maladies in beasts magical or mundane, find their familiars, and earn their wands and pointy hats–all while dodging covens of animal smugglers and dragons with heartburn. Under the tutelage of the talented Dr. Talon, these young HexVets in training will learn how to cure any animal, from a pygmy phoenix with bird flu to a unicorn with a broken horn. 

HexVet is an all-ages original graphic novels series written by beloved cartoonist Sam Davies and published by BOOM! Studios through their award-winning KaBOOM! imprint, home to R.L. Stine’s Just Beyond and more. The graphic novel series debuted in 2018 with HexVet: Witches-in-Training to much critical acclaim, then released the second book, HexVet: The Flying Surgery, in 2019. HexVet was a Scholastic Book Fair selection in 2019, and has since sold over 60,000 copies and is distributed internationally in over 132 countries. BOOM! Studios is slated to release additional volumes in the series.

HexVet is developed for television by Nicole Dubuc (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, The Rocketeer), who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. Frank Molieri (Transformers: Rescue Bots, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie) serves as co-executive producer and Kendall Michele Haney as story editor. The series is also executive produced by Stephen Christy (Just Beyond) and Ross Richie (2 Guns), with Mette Norkjaer serving as co-producer, for BOOM! Studios. Production of HexVet for Nickelodeon Animation is overseen by Eryk Casemiro, Executive Vice President, Nickelodeon Animation, Global Series Content. Kate Crownover serves as Nickelodeon’s Executive in Charge of Production for the series.

Jeymes Samuel to direct the film adaptation of Irredeemable and Incorruptible

BAFTA Film Award winner Jeymes Samuel is set to direct a film adaptation of the BOOM! Studios graphic novel series Irredeemable and its spin-off Incorruptible for Netflix. Academy Award nominated Kemp Powers will pen the adaptation, which will have the protagonists from each series – one a villain on a quest to become a superhero, and the other a fallen hero turned villain – face off.

The film will be produced by Shawn Carter, James Lassiter, and Stephen Christy and Ross Richie for BOOM! Studios. Kemp Powers and Adam Yoelin are executive producers on the film. Mette Norkjaer will oversee the project for BOOM! Studios.

When the world’s most powerful and beloved superhero, the god-like Plutonian, inexplicably begins slaughtering everyone on Earth, the only person that can stop him is his former arch-nemesis, the super-powered villain Max Damage. Unwillingly thrust into the role of savior, Max must uncover the Plutonian’s mysterious past in order to discover how to bring him down. But can he discover what made the Plutonian go crazy before his own degenerative super powers cause him to lose his mind?

Created by comic book legend Mark Waid and illustrated by Peter KrauseIrredeemable ran for 37 issues and selling over 1.5 million copies. A deconstructionist remix of the genre, the series dramatizes how the world’s greatest hero — The Plutonian — snapped under the pressure of his responsibilities and charted a dark path to become the world’s greatest supervillain.

Irredeemable’s sister series, Incorruptible, flipped the coin and followed supervillain Max Damage as he responded to the Plutonian’s evil by gradually transforming himself into a superhero. Created and written by Waid, Incorruptible ran for 30 issues and sold over 1 million copies during its run.

Irredeemable

Misfit City Heads to HBO Max

Another BOOM! Studios comic series is heading to HBO Max. Misfit City, created by Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith & Kurt Lustgarten and illustrated by Naomi Franquiz with Brittany Peer on color, and Jim Campbell lettering, is heading to the service. Popular writers Hannah Hafey and Kaitlin Smith will serve as creators and executive producers for the series, alongside Smith and Lustgarten. BOOM! Studios’ Stephen Christy, Ross Richie, and Mark Ambrose will also executive produce with Mette Norkjaer co-executive producing.

Misfit City is a treasure hunting story through a unique female lens. In the original pitch, it was described as the girls version of The Goonies.

BOOM! has been spreading things around with R.L. Stine’s Just Beyond coming to Disney+, BRZRKR, Something is Killing the Children, and Mech Cadets all in development at Netflix, and Slam! also being developed for HBO Max.

You can see our review of the first volume of Misfit City here.

Misfit City Vol. 1

Ollie Masters and Tyler Jenkins’ Snow Blind Heads to Apple Studios Starring Jake Gyllenhaal

Snow Blind
Snow Blind #1 retailer incentive cover by Matt Taylor

The 2016 comic series Snow Blind has been snatched up by Apple Studios after a six-way bidding war. The film is based on the comic series by Ollie Masters and Tyler Jenkins and published by BOOM! Studios. Jake Gyllenhaal is attached to star and Gustav Möller will make his English language directing debut. The script is being written by Patrick Ness.

The first issue of the comic series was released in December 2015 and ran for four issues.

High school teen Teddy has never seen eye-to-eye with his dad, but he never suspected that he might not be the man he thought he was. His life in a sleepy Alaskan suburb turns upside-down when he innocently posts a photo of his dad online that quickly goes viral, only to learn he and his family are in the Witness Protection Program. But what if his dad’s reasons for going into the program aren’t as innocent as he says?

Gyllenhaal and his Nine Stories partner Riva Marker are producing with BOOM! Studios’ Ross Richie and Stephen Christy. Adam Yoelin and Noah Stahl will be exec producers. Mette Norkjaer is co-producing.

(via Deadline)