Kevin Smith’s has created for himself a unique position within the pop culture landscape, largely outside the traditional system, yet still able to help shape it. His story is the kind of thing you dream of, beginning as an ordinary kid from New Jersey with dreams of making pretend for a living.
That dream became reality when his first feature film, Clerks, financed entirely on credit cards and hope, got picked up for Sundance and ultimately purchased by Miramax.
Smith has reinvented himself a few times in the intervening years. Those metamorphoses have taken him from indie darling to the head of a large podcast network, and more recently, to television.
After guest directing episodes of the CW’s slate of superhero shows (The Flash, Supergirl), Smith was tapped to showrun a return of He-Man in Masters of the Universe for Netflix.
This latest career evolution was, without any of us really knowing it, building toward something, and that something is here.
Announced today, via press release, Kevin Smith and WildBrain are joining forces to develop an animated Green Hornet series.
Unlike Masters of the Universe, which according to Smith will lean pretty dark, Green Hornet is aimed at a general audience.
Updated to modern times, this new story will follow the son of the original Green Hornet and the daughter of Kato, as they take up the mantle of protecting Century City. According to Smith, “We’ll be telling a tale of two Hornets – past and future – that spans generations and draws inspiration from a lifetime spent watching classic cartoons and amazing animation like Batman: The Animated Series, Heavy Metal, and Super Friends.”
A family-oriented animated series is certainly a departure from Smith’s usual fare. But it’s difficult to imagine a creator who could more readily helm the ship of any comic book adaptation. Smith has made his career as much about being a fan of these properties as a creator of them. And he’s no stranger to the material. Smith has written several Green Hornet comics for Dynamite Entertainment and has centered his work around comic book culture for decades.
If you want to know more, you can hear it from the source in today’s episode of Fatman Beyond streaming live at 8:30 Pacific.