Bendis: “Powers” Will Air on FX

Brian Michael Bendis, the architect of a lot of the Marvel Comics universe these days, is working with Michael Avon Oeming on a television adapation of his comic book series, “Powers.” 

“Powers” explores a superhero-populated world via the conventions of police procedural drama and was announced by Bendis last year.  Now at last weekend’s New York Comic Con, Bendis told MTV News that cable network FX is producing the pilot.

“‘Powers’ is in active development as a pilot at FX,” Bendis said. “I just handed in a draft to the network and we’re getting our notes from the network as soon as this thing is over. So next week I’ll get the notes, and as long as they don’t involve sock puppets and some sort of orgy scene that I’m not interested in, then hopefully it will go in the right direction.”

“But they’re a very smart network,” added Bendis. “It seems like the right place for it to be.”

Bendis went on to describe some of the trials and tribulations of bringing the series, which began as an independently published project and was eventually brought under Marvel’s publishing imprint Icon, to the small screen. “Powers” was optioned as a feature film in 2001, but the project never came to fruition.

“When we first sold it as a feature, we were lucky to get it optioned right away by Sony,” said Bendis. “We had to sit through waves of screenplays that were just inappropriate for the product, and for fans of the book. There were whole drafts of the screenplay without Deena Pilgrim [one of the series’ two main characters] in them. They’d hand me the screenplay and go, “What’s wrong with this?” and I’d go “He has no one to talk to!”

“After years of that it’s nice to have come out the other side and finally been given my chance to find out what the live-action language of ‘Powers’ is, versus the comic book language of ‘Powers.’”

Could “Powers” be the show that “Heroes” desparately wishes it could be?  We’ll have to wait and see, but it looks promising.