Every stalled superhero property seems to get the grounded, gritty reboot sooner or later, but could Amazon’s upcoming The Tick pilot turn the Big Blue Bug into another Dark Knight? Creator Ben Edlund says the new series will be a bit more realistic than its predecessor, but still firmly set in parody.

Increasingly crowded though the superhero landscape is, both The Tick creator Ben Edlund and Amazon half-hour series head Joe Lewis believe a new Tick can carve out its own niche, telling Entertainment Weekly “it has found this unique place where it’s long existed as a satire and I thought that we had the possibility here to do something really different — something that’s filled with satire but also true to action-comedies and superhero comedies.”

In particular, Edlund talked up the chance to parody such interconnected universes, while keeping The Tick with one blue foot in reality:

We’ve got this show about superheroes [where] we get to have fun with the idea of superheroes by starting with kind of a comedic parody of [an] event-oriented-like universe. It will be darker and more grounded. And it’s going to have a real story, a real hero’s myth. We’re the ones that get to have fun with it and that’s kind of the situation where right now that’s an open field in this area of entertainment.

The long-gestating superhero reboot with a pilot order at Amazon will feature Guardians of the Galaxy star Peter Serafinowicz as the title hero, recovering from a memory loss and re-teaming with his sidekick Arthur (Vinyl star Griffin Newman). The series also stars Valorie Curry as Arthur’s sister Dot, while original FOX star Patrick Warburton is confirmed to executive produce.

Original writer-creator Ben Edlund and fellow original executive producer Barry Josephson will helm the new project, with Transcendence helmer Wally Pfister in negotiations to direct the pilot, having worked as director of photography for The Dark Knight films.

It’ll be interesting to see what The Tick looks like in a modern context, but will grounding the story take away some of the fun?

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