The Umbrella Academy showrunner doesn’t want to get ahead of the comics

The Umbrella Academy showrunner doesn’t want to follow HBO’s Game of Thrones when it comes to adapting the source material.

The showrunner for Netflix’s superhero drama, The Umbrella Academy, Steve Blackman, is keep things real, and I commend him for it.

Not too long ago, there was a show called Game of Thrones; you remember it, right? That show was based on the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin, but because Martin wasn’t writing books as fast as the series was getting made, the show eventually overtook the source material and had to make up a lot of the rest of the plot, even if they had the broad strokes from Martin.

Sometimes this strategy worked, sometimes it didn’t, but the reaction to the eighth and final season was legendarily negative, so I think Umbrella Academy fans will probably agree with Blackman when he says he doesn’t want the show to overtake The Umbrella Academy graphic novel from Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá.

Blackman laid out how he’s approaching this issue while speaking with Comicbook.com:

"They’re very kind and they’re pitching me where they’re going in the next volumes, and you know, the two mediums are sort of crossing over now, sometimes they’re looking at something I do and say, we should put that in the graphic novel, and they’re saying, well, why don’t you do this in the show. We accept they’re sort of different things, but we love any times we can find these crossovers. But I have a good sense of where they’re going, I have an idea of where I want to go, and we’re sort of working together to get to that happy place. But I don’t want to get ahead of them. I love what they do. So hopefully if it times out, it never will."

If we compare TV adaptations of novels, I think it’s safe to say that the ones that follow the source material seem to fare better. Take Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, for example. She’s still actively writing more installments, but the show is taking it one book per season. Season 6 is up next, and will more or less be based on Gabaldon’s sixth book, A Breath of Snow and Ashes. Even though season 5 took some plot points from the sixth book, Outlander does a good job of adapting Gabaldon’s text while still keeping things fresh.

It seems like Blackman hopes to do the same for The Umbrella Academy. Since the series hasn’t officially been renewed for a third season, Way and Bá also have more time to get ahead of him.

I haven’t read The Umbrella Academy graphic novels, but I am super-excited for a potential third season that will hopefully dive into season 2’s cliffhanger finale. And the whole conceit of The Umbrella Academy is that the Hargreeves siblings were all born to women who became fully pregnant in a matter of seconds on October 1, 1989. But there were 43 such people, and there are only seven Hargreeves kids. Does everyone born like that have superpowers? Will we ever meet the rest?

Speaking to LRM Online, Blackman hints that there are indeed more of them out there, and it sounds like he has plans to bring some of them into the show. “What’s fun about it is that some of them might be good. Some of them may be bad. Some of them may be somewhere in between,” he said. “Dad didn’t tell them about anyone else. So, it will be entertaining and challenging to find out there are others.”

Season 3 will surely dive more into this idea. Can you imagine over 30 more Hargreeves children?

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h/t CBR