Erik Feig’s relatively new media company Picturestart recently won the film rights to the indie heist comic 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank. The project currently has Matthew Robinson (Dora and the Lost City of Gold, the forthcoming Live Die Repeat and Repeat) attached as a screenwriter.
This is a project to keep an eye on, because it’s a unique confluence of potential breakouts. It’s a new production company adapting a little-known comic from a relatively young indie publisher, and unusually for a recent comics adaptation, it’s for a film rather than a television series. This project could make some big waves in the entertainment industry, if it succeeds. But…what is it?
4 Kids Walk Into a Bank, written by Matthew Rosenberg and drawn by Tyler Boss, was originally published by Black Mask Studios as a five-issue miniseries in 2016. When Paige and her friends’ game of Dungeons & Dragons is interrupted by four strangers shoving their way into her house, she ends up finding out that her father’s an ex-con. His old crew, fresh out of prison, is trying to drag him back for one last bank heist. Her dad won’t talk to her about it, and the cops won’t take her seriously, which gives Paige one last option to keep her dad out of jail: get her friends together and rob the bank first.
Both Rosenberg and Boss are attached to the 4 Kids adaptation as producers, along with Black Mask co-founder Matt Pizzolo. For Rosenberg, the 4 Kids comic was his second indie hit at Black Mask, after 2015’s We Can Never Go Home with Michael Walsh. Since then, Rosenberg has parlayed that into several high-profile gigs at Marvel Comics, including The Punisher, Multiple Man, Hawkeye: Freefall, and a controversial 2018-2019 run on Uncanny X-Men. Boss’s next solo project is another indie book he’s writing and drawing, Dead Dog’s Bite, due out from Dark Horse in 2021. He and Rosenberg will team up again later this year for a creator-owned book published by Image, What’s the Furthest Place From Here?
4 Kids’s publisher, Black Mask Studios, is a small American indie company that primarily focuses on horror, crime, near-future science fiction, and a particular kind of high weirdness. Founded in 2012, Black Mask’s lineup has a surprising amount of star power, with books by talent such as Grant Morrison, Ghostface Killah, Ben Templesmith, Steve Niles, Magdalene Visaggio, Jamal Igle, and J.M. DeMatteis. It picked up its first Eisner nomination in 2017 for Visaggio’s Kim & Kim, a space opera about transgender bounty hunters.
While Black Mask has a few film, TV, and animated adaptations of its various books in various stages of development, 4 Kids is the first evidence of any movement on that front in a while. While there’s something vaguely mercenary about Black Mask’s overall approach—a solid 80% of its line consists of short, creator-owned limited series, with giant metaphorical neon signs flashing over them saying ADAPT ME, HOLLYWOOD—it’s one big burst of media exposure away from becoming a real contender in the American comics industry. At a time when Dark Horse has just lost most of its major tentpole franchises, thanks to the Disney/Fox merger, and Dynamite Entertainment can’t go ten minutes in 2020 without doing something dumb, this is a good time for a new company to rise up and grab a piece of the market.
Picturestart is in a similar position within the film industry. Founded last year by departing Lionsgate president Erik Feig, its official remit is to “make films and shows about people and for people finding themselves.” Its first completed feature film Unpregnant, an abortion road trip comedy (and isn’t that a fun combination of words), debuted on HBO Max earlier this month.
Picturestart also has upcoming productions based on the popular Animorphs young-adult franchise and Veronica Roth’s Chosen Ones, alongside Monster, an original film from the creators of Search Party. Another Picturestart project, Yasuke, based on the life of the 16th-century African samurai, has likely been derailed by the passing of its star, Chadwick Boseman.
4 Kids is an easy lay-up of an adaptation. It’s a dark crime adventure, starring but not necessarily aimed entirely at children, with a heavily stylized approach to its layouts that’s reminiscent of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s run on Marvel’s Hawkeye. Some comic books read a bit like they’re already their own storyboards for a film version, and 4 Kids is high on that list. It would make a great first comic for an interested newcomer to the medium, and it’s likely to make an entirely watchable movie. 4 Kids probably isn’t the kind of thing that’s destined for massive theatrical success—although if they secured a big-name actor as the ethnically ambiguous Paige, like Storm Reid, that could be a big deal—but even a modest take at the box office could further establish both Black Mask and Picturestart as companies to watch in their respective industries.
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