Warner Bros. And DC Have Decided It's Time For An 'Hourman' Movie

Folks, the time is almost upon us: the moment we've all been waiting for since before World War II, when a certain comic book character first graced the pages of Adventure Comics #48. I'm talking, of course, about everyone's favorite comic hero, Hourman, and the fact that Warner Bros. and DC have finally – finally – given in to the cacophonous clamoring of the populace and decided to do what they should have done years, nay, decades ago: make an Hourman movie.

Jokes aside, I've literally never heard of Hourman, but his superpowers sound like they might actually make for an interesting movie.

Deadline reports that Gavin James and Neil Widener have been hired to write a screenplay for an Hourman film for Warner Bros. and DC Films. James and Widener have been tapped to write Now You See Me 3, San Andreas 2, an adaptation of Michael Crichton's novel Micro, and the upcoming Hot Wheels film – none of which have actually seen the light of day yet, so it's tough to say whether these writers' previous work is predictive of an interesting Hourman movie.

Writer Ken Fitch and artist Bernard Baily cooked up the Hourman character in 1940, and multiple characters have taken on that mantle over the years. The original Hourman was a chemist named Rex Tyler, who concocted a synthesis known as "Miraclo" which gives him super strength and stamina; the catch is, the powers only last for one hour. See what I mean about it being a fascinating idea for a movie? As opposed to a hero who always has powers, or a guy who wears a special suit, Hourman essentially uses an elixir that only gives him a limited window to take advantage of his heightened heroic abilities. (It's not like this is new ground – Netflix recently did something similar with Project Power – but still, it's more interesting than "oh, another guy who was struck by lightning during a lab experiment.") In the comics, Rex Tyler's son ended up becoming the most popular iteration of the character, but there's no word yet about the alter-ego of the movie version.

Back in 2013, The CW tried to make an Hourman TV show with one of the writers of The Sopranos writing the pilot. That obviously never happened, but the Tylers have since shown up on DC's Stargirl.

Chernin Entertainment, the company behind films like the recent Planet of the Apes trilogy, The Greatest Showman, Ford v. Ferrari, and more, is on board as a producer of this movie, marking the first time they've produced a superhero movie.