Marvel Working on Bringing ‘Nova’ To Screen From ‘Moon Knight’ Writer
After months (if not years) of rumours, it seems that Marvel is actively taking some visible steps towards bringing the character of Nova to a screen near you.
For those of you needing a brief background of “Nova”, created by Marv Wolfman and John Buscema, the character first appeared back in 1976 in the comics. Richard Rider was chosen at random as a teenager by the alien Rhomann Dey, the last surviving Centurion of the planet Xandar’s elite Nova Corps, to inherit his power and succeed him in the rank of Nova Prime following the destruction of his world. Those powers include superhuman strength, speed, stamina, durability, reflexes, and flight. He also has the ability to channel Nova Force energy, making extremely powerful concussive blasts, shields and forcefields, or even portals and electromagnetic pulses. Rider doesn’t have a huge amount of crossover with the characters currently in the MCU, however, he has been leader of The Guardians of the Galaxy in the comics, and was part of the “Secret Invasion” comic book storyline, which is being made into a series for Disney+ (although Rider is unlikely to show up in the tv version). He also has a lot of involvement with the Skrulls, which we have seen in the MCU.
According to Deadline, who broke the news, Sabir Pirzada has been tasked with writing the project. He is credited with writing two episodes of the upcoming ‘Moon Knight’ series, and has previously worked on shows such as ‘Person of Interest’ and ‘Roswell, New Mexico’. It isn’t clear at the moment, whether this is being developed as a movie project or a Disney+ series, although given Pirzada’s background, I would say the latter is more likely.
Rumours of Nova being introduced into the MCU have been flying around for a while. Back in 2017, GotG director James Gunn commented “Nova comes up occasionally as someone we might use. One of the things I’m doing with creating Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, it will take place after the next two Avengers movies, and it will help to set up the next 10, 20 years of Marvel movies. It’s going to really expand the cosmic universe. We’re going to be setting up new characters. It will be the last movie with this version of Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Given Nova’s connection as leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the comic books, it would make sense to introduce him as part of a line-up change moving forward. We should stress, this is currently tagged “in development” and not an official announcement from Marvel, but news of a writer being attached from a reliable source does make it seem like we could get something official soon. We’ll let you know if and when we hear more!
