On the Hudlin Entertainment website, it was announced this week that director Reginald Hudlin will direct Valiant Entertainment’s film adaptation of its comic book “Shadowman”.
Hudlin will script – along with WGN America’s “Salem” showrunner Adam Simon – a rewrite of an original screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski who will stay on board the project as executive producer.
The film will be produced by Sean Daniel and Jason Brown’s The Sean Daniel Company, with Valiant Entertainment’s Dinesh Shamdasani.
Valiant Entertainment first introduced the Shadowman character in 1992 – “an African-American musician in New Orleans who becomes infected by a spirit that allows him otherworldly abilities.”
Although the exact details of the new script for the film are being kept quiet for now, in the latest incarnation of Shadowman, he is a “mystical defender of Earth” against demonic invasion from “Master Darque and other denizens of the netherworld known as the Deadside.”
Although this will be Hudlin’s first time directing a superhero movie, he has been involved in creating and writing comic books for the past few years, including a four-year run on Marvel’s “Black Panther”, and is currently reviving the Milestone Media franchise for DC Entertainment. He also wrote the comic book adaptation of Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” and co-wrote the follow-up “Django/Zorro” with Matt Wagner.
This will be his first major film project following his upcoming period drama and possible Oscar contender “Marshall” starring “Black Panther’s” Chadwick Boseman as Thurgood Marshall, set to be released in October from Open Road films.
And with this news, Hudlin now joins the growing rank of black directors making superhero films alongside Ryan Coogler with “Black Panther”, and Gina Prince Bythewood directing Sony Pictures’ upcoming “Spider Man” spinoff, “Silver and Black”.