(Los Angeles) Actor and director Taika Waititi, Oscar for Best Screenplay for Jojo rabbit in 2020, will adapt the mythical sci-fi comic to the cinema The Incal, sold in millions of copies worldwide, the publisher Les Humanoïdes associés announced on Thursday.
In addition to directing, the New Zealand artist will also participate in the screenplay of this adaptation of The Incal, a comic imagined at the end of the 1970s by the Franco-Chilean author Alejandro Jodorowsky and the designer Moebius (Jean Giraud).
“Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films and comics have influenced me and so many others for a very long time. I was amazed to have the opportunity to bring his iconic characters to life, ”Taika Waititi said in a statement.
If this is the first foray of the Associated Humanoids (established in Los Angeles since 1998) into the world of cinema, Taika Waititi has already adapted the universe of comics on the big screen. He directed for Marvel Studios the film Thor: Ragnarok, praised by fans and critics, and is also in command of the fourth installment of The Adventures of the God of the Avengers, Thor: Love and Thunder, announced in 2022.
The Incal is a space Mystical opera whose hero, a lousy private investigator named John Difool, accidentally discovers an esoteric artifact known as the Incal, coveted by many factions across the galaxy. Difool finds himself forced to save the universe and undertakes, reluctantly, a spiritual journey questioning his meaning of existence.
Fabrice Giger, boss of the Humanoids group (Les Humanoïdes associés and La Boîte à bubbles), thinks that The Incal, reissued in multiple languages, has quite simply “transformed everything he has touched” since its inception and that the magic will once again operate with Taika Waititi.
“When Fabrice Giger presented Taika Waititi’s work to me, it seemed obvious to me that it was the right one. I have full confidence in Taika’s creativity to give The Incal an astonishing version, both intimate and cosmic, ”said Jodorowsky, 92, quoted in the press release.
Figure of the underground, Jodorowsky is himself familiar with the world of cinema with films with esoteric atmospheres. Before Denis Villeneuve and David Lynch, he had tried, in vain, to adapt on the big screen Dune, the famous science fiction novel by Frank Herbert.
Les Humanoïdes associés were founded in Paris in 1974 by Jean Giraud (Moebius), Philippe Druillet and Jean-Pierre Dionnet and remains famous for the magazine Screaming metal. Disappeared fifteen years ago, the cult magazine made its big comeback last September in France in the form of a quarterly of nearly 300 pages.