Boondocks’ McGruder to Produce Amazon Alternate History Series
"Another Alternate Universe - What Will the Subject Be?"
Amazon announced this week that The Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder will partner with film producer Will Packer to create a new alternate universe series. Few details are known at this time, but the new series is expected to be similar in nature to Amazon's hit The Man in the High Castle.
McGruder is best known for his work as the creator of the comic strip
The Boondocks, which later became a Peabody-award winning television series.
The Boondocks completed a successful four-season, 55-episode run on Adult Swim in 2014. McGruder's second series for Adult Swim,
Black Jesus, has also found success on the network. In addition to his television work, McGruder wrote the screenplay for the 2012 Tuskegee Airmen film
Red Tails.
Film producer Will Packer will partner with McGruder on the Amazon series, and is best known for his work on the
Think Like a Man and
Ride Along film series and the Oscar-nominated
Straight Outta Compton. In addition to his film work, Packer was also the executive producer for the
2016 Roots remake for History Channel and the hit BET series
Being Mary Jane.
Though there are no other details on the forthcoming series, it will likely be socially and/or politically motivated, based on the previous work of both major contributors.
Thinking back to
The Man in the High Castle, one possibility to keep in mind is the 2016 Ben H. Winters novel
Underground Airlines. The novel takes place in an alternate United States where the American Civil War never occurred and slavery remains legal in four southern states.
Underground Airlines debuted on the
New York Times hardcover best-seller list, and was also ranked on the
Indiebound.org Indie Bestsellers' list.
Another possibility, though more remote, is a television adaptation of Will Shetterly's
Captain Confederacy series. The series had two runs, one a twelve-issue run in 1986 for Steeldragon Press, and a second four-issue run for Epic Comics in 1991 and 1992. The first series told the story of a white actor in an alternate America where the South won the Civil War and became a separate country. The main character plays the role of "Captain Confederacy" in a series of staged news events to maintain and reinforce Confederate ideas along side his sidekick, "Miss Dixie." He later becomes disillusioned and secretly plots a rebellion against his country.
The second series features a black female "Captain Confederacy" in the same alternate universe as the first series and details her experiences at a world superhero conference in Free Louisiana.
What will it the McGruder-Packer project be? Keep following
Entertainment Fuse for future updates on this new Amazon series!
