Get An Early Glimpse Of The Animated ‘Stan Lee’s Mighty 7′ In The First Clip From ‘Beginnings’ [Video]

It's been almost a year since The Hub and Squared Entertainment announced that they'd be producing an animated version of Stan Lee's Mighty 7, the Archie comic created by Lee, alongside writers Tony Blake and Paul Jackson, and artist Alex Saviuk.

Now, the first clip from the movie has surfaced in advance of an airing on The Hub in February. In a very meta approach, Lee stars as himself and meets the titular heroes after Archie has tasked him with creating a new superhero team. Check out the clip, which only offers a glimpse of the movie's jaw droppingly strange voice cast, after the jump.

The movie stars Lee, Armie Hammer (The Lone Ranger), Christian Slater (Heathers), Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory), Teri Hatcher (Lois and Clark), Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Darren Criss (Glee), Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings), Jim Belushi (According to Jim) and Michael Ironside (Total Recall).

I just can't imagine that group of people in a room together, but you can hear them all talking to each other, at least occasionally about whether Earth is a dump, in February on The Hub.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Lee relayed his inspiration for the franchise:

I was looking for something to do. I remembered the first successful superhero thing I'd done was the Fantastic Four. If that was good, what is even better than four? I thought I'd do eight, but I couldn't find anything that rhymed beautifully with eight or sounded good. So I thought the Mighty 7 had a good sound to it. I very often start with the title and make up the story to go with it. I thought, "Boy, wouldn't it be keen if I put myself in the story and did the world's first reality comic book?" Then it occurred to me, what if I found seven superheroes and got them to work for me. They would do all the work, and I would just write whatever happened.

Plans for the project are to continue the franchise with a monthly comic (three issues were released by Archie Comics in 2012 to drum up support for the animated movie) and an animated TV series next year.

[Via SuperHeroHype]