Amazon Studios and Sony Pictures Television have cast the lead role in their upcoming reboot of The Tick, based on Ben Edlund’s popular, bug-friendly blue superhero. Guardians of the Galaxy and Shaun of the Dead actor Peter Serafinowicz will play the titular crime-fighter in the show, replacing franchise veteran Patrick Warburton, who portrayed the character in both an Emmy-nominated animated series (1994-1997) and a previous live-action show (2001-2002).
Serafinowicz was recently seen in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy as Denarian Saal, and also appeared in 2004’s Shaun of the Dead. He also provided the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace and starred in his own, BAFTA-nominated sketch comedy series The Peter Serafinowicz Show.
Serafinowicz joins a cast that already includes Vinyl actor Griffin Newman as The Tick’s moth-themed sidekick (and accountant) Arthur Everest, and House of Lies actress Valorie Curry as Arthur’s sister, Dot.
Edlund, who initially created The Tick as the mascot for a comic book shop newsletter before bringing the character to the screen, will serve as the writer and an executive producer on the series. Transcendence director Wally Pfister will helm the pilot episode.
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The new series will reportedly follow The Tick’s adventures after he recovers from memory loss and finds himself re-teaming with Arthur to fight evil. Declared schizophrenic due to his belief that the city in danger from evil villains, Arthur faces his own set of problems when he’s called back into action.
Created by Edlund in 1986, The Tick was initially conceived as a character that embodied all of the tropes of the superhero genre to the point of absurdity. He ended up becoming the subject of his own independent comic-book series, then a two-season animated series on Fox that earned a trio of Emmy nominations and two prestigious Annie Awards during its run. The series was later turned into a live-action series with a pilot directed by Men in Black filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld.
