‘Static Shock’ Movie to Be Written By ‘Safety’ Writer Randy McKinnon

Warner Bros. and DC have found their Static Shock writer for the upcoming movie adaptation of the cult comic book superhero character. Randy McKinnon, who recently wrote the Disney+ original movie Safety, will write the screenplay for the film, which has Michael B. Jordan (Black Panther) and Reginald Hudlin (Django Unchained) on board as producers.

The news of McKinnon’s hiring comes our way via The Hollywood Reporter.

Static Shock focuses on Virgil Hawkins, a kid who gains superpowers after being exposed to strange gas. The character debuted in 1993 in a DC Comics-distributed title from Milestone Comics, a comic company created by Black writers and artists to help make comics a more inclusive space. Milestone went out of business for years, but it’s now back up and running with a new Static Shock digital comic as one of its big April titles; in addition to producing this movie, Hudlin is also writing the comic, which is described like this:

In this monthly miniseries (20 pages per issue), bullied nerd Virgil is gifted with incredible electromagnetic powers in the wake of the Big Bang. Now he finds himself caught between an over-militarized police response to Black kids getting special abilities and some of those kids who are using those powers in dangerous and destructive ways. But when the bullies who terrorized him before the Big Bang show up with powers of their own, can Static be the hero that Dakota needs?

Hudlin has been all-in on Static Shock for years, trying to adapt it into a live-action back in 2014 and trying to will an adaptation into existence ever since. The character has appeared outside the pages of DC Comics once before: in 2000, he was the lead character in an animated series that aired on The WB for four seasons, before that network switched over and became The CW. Here’s what that show looked like:

As for McKinnon, he recently served as a story editor on a teen-centric Netflix show called Grand Army, and was a staff writer on the Netflix horror series Chambers, which starred Uma Thurman. He recently broke into the world of writing feature films with Safety, an inspirational sports story for Disney+ about a Clemson University football player who secretly raised his younger brother on campus when his home life became too fraught for the boy to stay at home. Hudlin directed that movie, so it seems that he and McKinnon have a solid working relationship and that partnership will continue here.

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