Posted in: Current News, streaming, TV | Tagged: Energon Universe, gi joe, transformers

Energon Universe: Skybound, Hasbro Developing Animated Series Adapt

Skybound and Hasbro Entertainment are developing an animated series adaptation of Energon Universe (G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Void Rivals).

The worlds of G.I. Joe, Transformers, and Void Rivals (co-created by Robert Kirkman and Lorenzo De Felici) will be colliding on the small screen in a very big way, with Deadline Hollywood reporting that Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment and Hasbro Entertainment are teaming up for an adult animated series adaptation of Kirkman's comic book series Energon Universe. Lucifer showrunner Joe Henderson (White Collar, Almost Human) has been tapped to pen the adaptation and serve as showrunner, with the series expected to be taken out to buyers soon. The news comes less than five years after Kirkman acquired the comic book rights to G.I. Joe and Transformers from Hasbro.

Launching in June 2023 with Void Rivals, the stage was set for where things were headed when the Transformers character Jetfire appeared at the end for a great, jaw-dropping moment. Four months later, Transformers and four G.I. Joe character-focused miniseries were released to further lay the foundation for the universe. That would blow up in a very big (and successful) way in November 2024, with Transformers #1, G.I. Joe #1, and Void Rivals #1 leading the way for what now amounts to over 7 million combined units sold worldwide.

"I wanted to kind of find a new way into these series. I wanted to kind of, you know, do Transformers and G.I. Joe in a way that would be the most exciting. And I think that doing it in a shared universe with cohesive entanglements that enrich every series, enriching… enrich every series? Who cares. (laughter) So, I thought that would be like the coolest way to do it. And the way to get to that would be to do a stealth launch of a new book, which became Void Rivals," Kirkman shared during an interview at NYCC 2024, when discussing how Void Rivals came into play as a way of connecting Transformers and G.I. Joe.

Kirkman continued, "And then Transformers just shows up, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, like, if I was ever reading a book by, like, Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, and The Transformer showed up, I'd lose my mind. It'd be amazing. And so, that was the initial idea. And to make that possible, it was kind of like how can Lorenzo de Felici, the co-creator, and I backwards-engineer an 80s toy property that never existed that can stand next to Transformers and G.I. Joe and feel like it fits. And so, you know, from that kind of nugget, it was like, okay, well, it's Faction A versus Faction B, and they both have different things that they're trying to accomplish. Then it's the Agorrians and the Zertonins, and how do we do something that's original but definitely feels in the wheelhouse of Transformers and G.I. Joe.  And from there we were off to the races."

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