In 2015 following the deal that sent Spider-Man over to Marvel Studios, Sony was desperate to build a cinematic universe of their own. Before we had Venom, there was an attempt to create a connected franchise out of the Valiant Comics heroes. Sony picked up the rights to Bloodshot and Harbinger, with plans for those two films to eventually crossover in a Harbinger Wars movie. Well, that plan sounded good at the time, but Sony apparently thinks otherwise now.
A Bloodshot movie is still in the works at Sony with Vin Diesel as the nanite-powered hero, but as for Harbinger…well, that’s been sold off to Paramount Pictures. Making the move as well are all of the attached talent, including director Justin Tipping, co-writer Joshua Beirne-Golden, and producer Neal H. Moritz who had a big part to play in making this deal happen.
Harbinger centers on a group of powered heroes led by Peter Stancheck, who brings the team together to battle Toyo Harada, a former mentor of Peter’s and the most powerful psionic on Earth. Basically, they are the Valiant version of the X-Men, and there are loads of characters that Paramount can pull from to fill the gap left by Bloodshot. Other Valiant films in the works include Faith and Eternal Warrior, either of which could be pulled into the Harbinger movie. Dylan O’Brien and Noah Centineo had been involved but that’s no longer the case as Paramount plans to start over on the creative process.
So now DMG Entertainment, who have full ownership of the Valiant Comics, have characters with film rights at multiple studios just like Marvel did in the ’90s and currently. However, Bloodshot isn’t as big of a deal as Spider-Man so they could still proceed with a Valiant Cinematic Universe without him. [THR]
