Sony Wants to Create Its Own Cinematic Universe with the Harbinger Series

Good news for those who aren’t yet experiencing superhero fatigue: Sony is getting in on the cinematic universe action.  Yes, the company that owns the rights to Spider-Man wants to establish its own shared universe around someone who isn’t named Peter Parker.

The company is planning to adapt Valiant’s Harbinger and Bloodshot comics to film, and it sounds like they’re looking to release the first one by “late 2017 or early 2018,” as Geek.com put it. According to the website, the first two will center on Peter Stanchek, a telekinetic teen, and Bloodshot, who was resurrected from the dead with nanites—tiny electromagnetic devices that have turned him into a killing machine.

Their stories interconnect through the Harbinger Foundation, an origination that recruits superheroes to aid founder Toyo Harada in dominating the human race. Stanchek is a former member who defects and is joined by others who have also changed their minds about Harada.  With a promising story, the big question is whether or not audiences are willing to go to the theaters to see yet another superhero franchise on the big screen.

Marvel kicked off the trend with  solo films like Iron Man, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger which led to an Avengers film. The MCU has expanded to include even more heroes like Black Panther and Doctor Strange, whose solo film comes out in November. Speaking of Strange, he joins an onslaught of superheroes that will appear in Avengers: Infinity War. Among them are the outcasts from Guardians of the Galaxy and Asgardians, Thor and Loki.

Warner Bros. followed suit with their own connected universe, started with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Two Justice League films are in the works, along with solo films for Batman, Superman, Aquaman, The Flash and Wonder Woman.

So, yeah, there’s a lot going on in the superhero world at the moment. Do you think there’s room for yet another expanded universe?

(via Geek.com, image via screencap)

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