Comic book Mage: The Hero Discovered gets rediscovered as a movie

After more than a decade battling demons in Development Hell, Matt Wagner’s comic MAGE: THE HERO DISCOVERED is finally fighting back toward possible production.

Producer Lloyd Levin (WATCHMEN, HELLBOY) has revived the property, and plans to put the film together indie-style before bringing it to studios. Levin, who calls MAGE “one of the great untapped comic books from the ’80s renaissance that also spawned Watchmen and Batman: Dark Knight,” will produce with Andrew Cosby, who has also long been involved with the adaptation. Levin and Cosby are currently working together on THE UNTAMED.

A spin on the legend of King Arthur, the MAGE story follows an aimless bartender named Kevin Matchstick who learns he’s a superhuman incarnation of Pendragon, complete with his own Excalibur (a magic baseball bat). Matchstick begrudgingly joins a peculiar wizard named Mirth to stop an evil being known as the Umbra Sprite.