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King Kong Live-Action Series in Early Development at Disney+
A live-action series about the origin of King Kong is in early development at Disney+, per report from Variety.
Stephany Folsom, who recently developed the Amazon series “Paper Girls” for television, will write and executive produce the King Kong show. James Wan, Michael Clear and Rob Hackett will also executive produce on behalf of Atomic Monster along with Dannie Festa for World Builder Entertainment. Disney Branded Television will produce. The show would be a serialized action-adventure drama that brings the classic monster story into the modern age, with a return to Skull Island and the dawn of a new Kong. The series will explore the mythology of King Kong’s origin story and the supernatural mysteries of his home based on IP from Merian C. Cooper’s original books and the new King Kong novelizations by Joe DeVito.
The Merian C. Cooper Estate had teamed with DeVito to produce new novelizations that are being used as source material for the series, along with the original book IP. A live-action series, King Kong Skull Island, was in development at MarVista Entertainment and IM Global Television five years ago with a different creative team, also based on Cooper’s King Kong and DeVito ArtWorks’ Skull Island, with Festa executive producing. It did not come to fruition.
King Kong, a 90-year-old character with an entangled web of rights, has been the subject of a slew of movies, most recently featured in Legendary/Warner Bros’ Monsterverse, which only uses the Kong part of the gorilla monster’s moniker for its titles: 2017’s Kong: Skull Island, 2019’s Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and 2021’s Godzilla vs. Kong, followed by a Netflix anime series, Skull Island. The original King Kong film debuted in 1933 and became an instant hit. Peter Jackson also remade the original film in 2005 with Adrien Brody, Jack Black, and Naomi Watts.
This marks the second live-action show about iconic movie monsters set up at a streaming service. Apple is currently prepping a series about Godzilla and the Titans, with Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt Russell recently announced as stars. That series is connected to the Monsterverse films, while the King Kong Disney+ show is a separate entity.
