Ava DuVernay is developing Naomi, a superhero series for Th CW. She has teamed with Arrow writer and co-exec producer Jill Blankenship to write and exec produce the project.
Naomi is a fairly new superhero as she debuted as a comic book series in 2019 with Naomi: Season One, which was co-written by Brian Michael Bendis and David F. Walker, and illustrated by Jamal Campbell.
The show will follow a teen girl’s journey from her small northwestern town to the heights of the multiverse following “a supernatural event” in her home state of Oregon. After the event shakes her hometown to the core, Naomi sets out to uncover its origins, and what she discovers will challenge everything we believe about our heroes. More specifically, her titular comic book followed Naomi as she discovered Superman might not be the only adopted American kid with unexpected, unearthly powers. At least, “unearthly” when compared to our specific version of earth.
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Naomi is poised to join the CW as Supergirl and Black Lightning both come to an end this coming year, following their upcoming sixth and fourth seasons, respectively. It will be produced by DuVernay’s Array Filmworks in association with Warner Bros Television. Sarah Bremner and Paul Garnes will produce for Array Filmworks.
It marks the latest DC adaptation at the youth-skewing network this development season. The broadcaster is also developing an adaptation of Wonder Girl, based on the DC characters created by Joëlle Jones, with Queen of the South executive producer/co-showrunner Dailyn Rodriguez and Greg Berlanti as well as Black Lightning spinoff Painkiller, which will star Jordan Calloway reprising his role for the spinoff. It has been set up as a planted pilot spinoff that will air as the seventh episode of Black Lightning’s fourth season, which will premiere in February 2021. Black Lightning showrunner Salim Akil will write, exec produce, and direct.
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Though this marks DuVernay’s first project for The CW (and the first DC superhero series not EP’d by Greg Berlanti), she has been quite prolific on the small screen in recent years, with Netflix’s acclaimed When They See Us and a slew of upcoming series — including HBO Max’s DMZ (also based on a DC comic), NBC’s Native American family drama Sovereign, and Netflix’s Colin Kaepernick biopic series.