Filming is firmly underway on the Netflix adaptation of The Umbrella Academy . Written and created by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way and illustrated by Gabriel Bá, The Umbrella Academy is a comic book series about a group of super-powered youngsters who are born to women that showed no previous signs of pregnancy and are later brought together and adopted by Sir Reginald Hargreeves to form the titular Academy. The crime-fighting team eventually disband but are reunited by the death of their mentor and the threat of a common foe. The series currently stands at two volumes – “Apocalypse Suite” and “Dallas” – but Way has frequently claimed that a third is in development.

The Umbrella Academy started as a cult hit but steadily grew in popularity and a movie adaptation was soon optioned by Universal Studios. Mark Bomback ( The Wolverine , War For The Planet Of The Apes ) was originally hired to write the script but was eventually replaced by Rawson Marshall Thurber (Dodgeball, Central Intelligence ), however the project ultimately failed to get off the ground. In 2015, Universal announced that The Umbrella Academy would instead be adapted for television but in July last year, Netflix revealed that they would be producing the live-action series.

After all of the false starts and re-writes, it now appears that The Umbrella Academy TV series is finally making progress, a Tweet from comic artist Gabriel Bá confirms. Bá posted a photo of himself alongside Gerard Way on the set of The Umbrella Academy with the caption “Lights! Camera! ACTION! This has officially begun” and the hashtag “UmbrellaAcademy.”

Lights! Camera! ACTION!
This has officially begun! #UmbrellaAcademy #firstday #Netflix #UCP #wondertwinsumbrellaadventure pic.twitter.com/NrXjUij71L
— Gabriel Bá (@Gabriel_Ba) January 15, 2018

The start of filming on The Umbrella Academy must surely come as a relief both to fans of the comic book series and the creators themselves, as a live action version has been in the cards in some form or another for around eight years now. Although the project is finally underway proper, Gerard Way has no time to rest on his laurels, however, as he will be acting as executive producer on the Netflix series.

It may be early days on the production of The Umbrella Academy but the early signs suggest plenty of promise for the series. Not only does Way’s involvement ensure that the adaptation won’t stray unnecessarily away from its source material, but Netflix have a track record in delivering when it comes to stories with a dark and macabre tone, as proven with A Series Of Unfortunate Events . Of course, the streaming giant is also very much at home with superhero fare thanks to their Marvel output, and the thought of Netflix bringing those two themes together is bound to excite both newcomers and fans of the original comic books.