Disney+ has begun work on a King Kong live-action series. This will be the first-ever live-action show about the character. According to Deadline, Disney recently closed talks with James Wan’s studio Atomic Monster.

James Wan is known as a director of horror films: he directed Saw, The Conjuring and Astral. However, he also has experience in blockbusters – he directed Aquaman and the seventh Fast and Furious.

The as-yet-untitled King Kong series will be written by Stephanie Folsom, who worked on Toy Story 4 and Star Wars Resistance. It will be an adventure drama set in the modern era. The action will unfold on Skull Island, where a new King Kong appears. The series will explore the mythology of the origin of the hero and touch on the supernatural secrets of his family.

The series will be based on the original stories about King Kong, invented by Merian Cooper, and new books by Joe DeVito. Cooper is the director of the very first King Kong movie, released back in 1933. It is he who is considered the creator of the character: at one time he was seriously interested in the life of gorillas and came up with a giant monkey that ended up in New York. Now the Cooper heirs have teamed up with DeVito to write new material, which will be taken as the basis for the series.

This is not the first attempt to bring the King Kong story to the small screen. Five years ago, MarVista Entertainment and IM Global Television worked on King Kong Skull Island with a different creative team. But he never saw the light. But now Netflix is ​​preparing an anime series “Skull Island” (“Skull Island”). Its release date is still unknown, but there is a possibility that it will be released as early as 2022.

The last truly high-profile film in the franchise, King Kong, came out in 2005, directed by Peter Jackson and starring Naomi Watts as the female lead. In 2017, Kong: Skull Island premiered with Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson. It went well overall, but fell short of the success of King Kong. In 2021, the film Godzilla vs. Kong was released, where a huge monkey fought a giant lizard monster.