Hulu Orders Marvel's Runaways and Beau Willimon's The First
Why buy one when you can get two? Hulu has been shopping and has picked up two new series, Marvel’s Runaways from Gossip Girl creators Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, and The First (working title), about the first human mission to Mars, created and written by House Of Cards creator Beau Willimon.
Hulu had originally ordered a pilot episode of Runaways with backup scripts to boot while The First has received a straight to series order.
As Deadline describes Marvel’s Runaways – which is a co-production with ABC- is based on the comics created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona, is the story of six diverse teenagers who can barely stand one another but who must unite against a common foe: their parents. It stars Rhenzy Feliz as Alex Wilder, a loud-and-proud nerd who spends much of his free time playing video games; Lyrica Okano as Nico Minoru, a tough, angst-ridden budding Wiccan; Virginia Gardner as Karolina Dean, who, underneath her veneer of privilege and perfection, is experiencing a newfound eagerness to explore her identity; Ariela Barer as Gert Yorkes, a purple-haired, riot grrrl; Gregg Sulkin as Chase Stein, a high school heartthrob many write off as a dumb jock but who exhibits flashes of untapped brilliance in engineering; and Allegra Acosta as the eternally peppy Molly Hernandez, the youngest and most innocent of the group.
Elaborating on the themes of The First, Beau Willimon told Deadline: “It’s a story about the human spirit. About our indomitable need to reach for unknown horizons. About people working toward the greatest pioneering achievement in human history. And about the cost of that vision, the danger and sacrifice – emotional, psychological, and physical – that’s required to achieve it. How ordinary, imperfect people band together and overcome a myriad of obstacles to grasp the extraordinary.”
The series will go into production later this year for a premiere on Hulu in 2018.
