Curt Pires Launching New Sci-Fi Comic ‘Indigo Children,’ With A Film Adaptation Already In Development

Imagine if David Fincher directed Stranger Things. Picturing that in your head? Good.

Curt Pires — a member of Forbes 30 Under 30 2022 — wants to capture that tantalizing combination of creative sensibilities with his latest comic book endeavor: Indigo Children. Hitting stands by way of Image Comics on March 29, the new series follows a group of individuals who believe they are of Martian heritage. Gifted with supernatural abilities and hunted by unsavory parties, these Indigo Children claim to be on a mission of planetary proportions.

To go any further than that would be to invite spoilers into the conversation, but I can exclusively announce that the book (featuring artwork from Alex Diotto and colors by Dee Cuniffee) has already been optioned for a feature film, which is in the early stages of development from Alan Wake producer, Jeff Ludwig.

This marks Pires’ third creator-owned title to score a Hollywood deal after Youth (a comiXology Original in development as a series at AmazonAMZN
) and Wyrd (a Dark Horse-published offering in development as a series at FX, with Perry Mason’s Matthew Rhys set to star in the titular role).

“My intention with this book is to evolve and push this mode of storytelling into the future,” he says of Indigo Children, also citing the classic genre films directed by Steven Spielberg (think Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.) as a major source of inspiration. “It still holds all of the awe and wonder and humanism of its influences, but it bends it into new shapes and pushes it into new frontiers.”

Check out two covers for the debut issue below:

Pires reveals that the story began to take shape after he came across an interesting article on the Snapchat news feed, “which is basically ‘meet the 8-year-old child genius who claims to be a reincarnated martian,’” he recalls. “So naturally, I dive in and become instantly obsessed. The wheels start turning because that’s just the way my brain works and I start to envision this big sci-fi epic with a conspiracy/mystery core.”

He brought the idea to Diotto (who previously worked with Pires on Youth) and two members of the Image Comics Board of Directors: Todd McFarlane (in addition to creating comic book icons like Spawn and Venom, he also co-founded Image in the early ‘90s) and Eric Stephenson (Publisher and Chief Creative Officer at the company).

“It’s been three, almost four, years since we’ve been working on this thing … and I can honestly say it’s the most perfectionistic I’ve been on any project,” Pires concludes. “We’ve written and re-written scripts and tried to push things to their absolute limit. Hopefully, we succeed.”

Indigo Children #1 goes on sale from Image Comics Wednesday, March 29. Several issues were written in tandem with Rockwell White.