Producers including Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson are developing Christopher Priest’s racially charged thriller Xerø into a film franchise.
In the late 1990s, as the comic industry was reeling from the bursting of a speculator bubble that put many retailers and distributors out of business, DC Comics quietly experimented with a number of interesting concepts from auteur-oriented creators, most of which died lonely and forgotten. Xerø, a racially-charged action thriller from Christopher Priest, a Black comics pioneer best known for his work on Black Panther, was one of those books, running for 12 issues in 1997-1998. Now the title is destined for a bigger stage. On Friday, news came that Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s film and television production company G-Unit, in collaboration with Color Farm Media and Illuminous Media, is developing Xerø into a film franchise. And Warner Media, DC’s parent company that has been aggressively adapting the imprint’s pantheon of heroes in films, broadcast and streaming media, is nowhere to be seen. The comic, drawn by ChrisCross, told the story of a Black government assassin, or “closer,” who can disguise himself as white using bio-organic implants. Coltrane “Trane” Walker is, by day, a star basketball player in St. Louis, and the story follows his struggle to reconcile his dual identities and reclaim his Black personhood from the programming of the white power structure in which he was operating.
