Rapper Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson has quietly been building himself a successful Hollywood career. He’s had various acting roles but has found his real niche as a producer. And now he’s looking to join the DC movie universe, as his G-Unit Film & Television is producing an adaptation of Christopher Priest’s DC comic ‘Xerø’.
The story of the comic, created by Priest and artist ChrisCross, follows Trane Walker, a Black government assassin who weaponizes invisibility by disguising himself as a white man to blend anonymously into the exotic Casino Royale haunts of the international elite. Spanning the gulf between that and the disenfranchised city streets of East St. Louis, Illinois, Walker is a man living in two worlds but taking ownership of neither. ‘Xerø’ chronicles his moral awakening and the life-and-death perils it presents.
“There’s no one better than Christopher Priest to bring G-Unit Film & Television into the world of comic book superheroes,” says Jackson in a statement carried by Deadline. “Watch as we build Xerø into a franchise alongside Christopher and Color Farm Media. I can’t wait for the world to meet Trane Walker in an all-new way.”
“Xerø depicts a slow-moving car wreck at the intersection of race and class,” Priest says. “The commonality of struggle represented by the life experiences of Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, G-Unit Film & Television, and Color Farm assure a broad depth of first-hand appreciation for that delicate balance. It’s exciting to be working together to create this new world.”
No writer or director is attached yet, though Jackson and co. are looking at this first live-action outing as the launching point for a series of movies and potentially more.
Jackson’s producing output includes the series ‘Power’, in which he also acted. He’s since shepherded a number of spin-offs and has a variety of other shows on the way.
And while we’re talking adaptations, there is forward movement on Prime Video’s TV series based on video game franchise ‘Fallout’.
Walton Goggins, best known for TV’s ‘Justified’ and ‘The Righteous Gemstones,’ and movies including ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Ant Man & The Wasp’, is aboard to star in the show.
‘Fallout’ posits a world where the future envisioned by Americans in the late 1940s explodes upon itself through a nuclear war in 2077. Goggins’ character has yet to be revealed, though he’s reportedly playing a “ghoul”, a mutated human who experienced prolonged radiation exposure amid the Great War.
This series comes courtesy of ‘Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and their Kilter Films company. Nolan will direct the first episode, while ‘Captain Marvel’ writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet and ‘Silicon Valley’ veteran Graham Wagner are the showrunners.
‘Fallout’ has been an incredibly successful game series, while its mobile spin-off, ‘Fallout Shelter’, has been downloaded more than 170 million times. Which means there’s clearly an audience for this, even though adapting video games has proved notoriously tough.
This isn’t even the only series Nolan and Joy are working on – they also have an adaptation of William Gibson novel ‘The Peripheral’ in the works, along with another season of ‘Westworld’ due this year.
