Taika Waititi is set to adapt graphic novel The Incal into a feature film. The script will be co-written by Waititi, Jemaine Clement and Peter Warren. Clement and Waititi previously collaborated on the popular comedies Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows.
“The films and graphic novels of Alejandro Jodorowsky have influenced me and so many others for so long. I was stunned to be given the opportunity to bring his iconic characters to life,” said Waititi.
The Incal was created by filmmaker and writer Jodorowsky and French artist Moebius at the end of the 1970s and went on to become the highest selling science fiction graphic novel in history. It is about a private investigator named John Difool who finds mystical artefact The Incal, leading him to team with a ragtag crew to save the universe.
“I fully trust Taika’s creativity to give ‘The Incal’ a stunning take, intimate and at the same time of cosmic proportions,” Jodorowsky has said, after apparently giving his blessing to Waititi in a Zoom meeting, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The publishers of the graphic novel, Humanoids’ CEO Fabrice Giger explains; “It began as the adventures of a jackass named John Difool, and then it became something else — we called it ‘The Incal’ — something that has transformed everything it’s ever touched and continues to do so: its creators, the other artists who later became a part of John’s journey, its publisher Humanoids and myself in the process, countless readers, writers and directors around the world, and soon, I believe, the great Taika Waititi himself and everyone who looks to him for inspiration.”
Jodorowsky and Waititi appear in a video, in which Jodorowsky says that if he was younger, he’s be enraged at the thought of someone else making a film of The Incal. But as he is now 92, he believes Waititi is “exactly the right person for the project.”
Waititi is in-demand has been attached to numerous projects. He has Marvel’s Thor: Love and Thunder coming up, as well as a Star Wars movie, and a Roald Dahl project for Netflix.