Ellen Page joins the cast of The Umbrella Academy for Netflix

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Ellen Page, who portrayed the "phasing" mutant Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde for Fox's X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, has recently been enrolled as the first to join the cast of Netflix's UMBRELLA ACADEMY.

Based on the Dark Horse Comics series created by My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way with art by Gabriel Ba, UMBRELLA ACADEMY follows the estranged members of a dysfunctional family of superheroes (aka the Umbrella Academy): The Monocle, Spaceboy, The Kraken, The Rumor, The Séance, Number Five, The Horror and The White Violin. Together, they combine their talents to solve their father’s mysterious death while being at each other's throats due to their divergent personalities and abilities.

For the forthcoming series, Page will step into the role of Vanya, the outcast of her flawed family. As the only child of the group without supernatural abilities, Vanya struggles to find her place among her siblings as well as the rest of the world.

Serving as showrunner for the series is FARGO and ALTERED CARBON's Steve Blackman. Blackman will also board the project as executive producer in a partnership with Bluegrass Television, Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg from Dark Horse Entertainment. Additionally, the script for the pilot episode of the show will be penned by Jeremy Slater, whose work on The Exorcist has been celebrated by many fans of the horror genre.

As a side note, I highly recommend chekcing out Way's other comic book work including the titles The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and especially Doom Patrol. Both are exciting reads, though Doom Patrol is where it's at.

The 10-episode series will be in session come 2018.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He's also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You'll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.