The Justice League Dark has conjured its next member.
A series dedicated to “Madame Xanadu,” the DC Comics title about an immortal sorceress who dates back to the time of King Arthur, is in development for HBO Max with Bad Robot and Warner Bros. Television.
Filmmaker Angela Robinson (“Professor Marston and the Wonder Women,” “True Blood”) is writing the one-hour drama series and, should it get greenlit, will executive produce along with J.J. Abrams and Ben Stephenson. Rachel Rusch Rich will co-executive produce.
HBO Max declined to comment.
Robinson has a busy plate. She signed an overall deal with Warner Bros. Television Group in March; she’s working with cartoonist and author Terry Moore on adapting his LGBTQ graphic novel “Strangers in Paradise” as a feature film; and she’s directing a remake of the 1983 cult classic “The Hunger” for Warner Bros.
Madame Xanadu — who in the comics is first known as Nimue Inwundu, and has deep ties to the legend of King Arthur and the wizard Merlin — is a powerful wielder of magic who has lived for many centuries, can foresee the future and keeps a collection of malevolent forces captured in mason jars.
She’s also one of the founding members of the Justice League Dark, a team of DC’s supernatural characters who live in the realms of mysticism and magic — that just so happens to also have a series in the works at HBO Max through Bad Robot. Other JLD members include John Constantine (who has an HBO Max series in development with Guy Bolton) and Zatanna (who has a feature film in development through DC Films that “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell is writing).
Like a fortune emerging from the spectral mists of time and space, Bad Robot’s grand design for Justice League Dark is becoming clearer, with each of the members getting their own individual titles along with the larger, shared “Justice League Dark” show. What isn’t clear at this point is which would debut first, the individual shows or the JLD series. Given the enormous success Marvel Studios had with holding “The Avengers,” and the monumental headache Warner Bros. created when it rushed “Justice League,” it would seem the more successful path is allowing each character to chart their origin stories before bringing them all together.