ABC Developing Social Media Thriller from DC Entertainment’s Vertigo Comics

Michael Schneider November 17, 2015, 6:30 pm

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ABC is looking to explore the dark side of social media, via a new project from DC Entertainment’s Vertigo imprint.

The network is developing Unfollow, based on the recently launched comic series of the same name.

Michael Narducci (The Originals, The Vampire Diaries) is adapting the drama, which revolves around a reclusive Internet billionaire who announces on his social media platform that he’s dying. As a result, he plans to give his fortune away to a random group of 140 people around the world. But one of those benefactors winds up dead–and the remaining 139 are not only suspects, but could be next.

Narducci will executive produce and write the script, which comes from Warner Bros. TV.

Rob Williams and Michael Dowling created the comic, which was released in print and as a digital download on Nov. 4. In an interview on Vertigo’s website, Williams called the new comic “a social media thriller with a zeitgeist edge and some killer art (and murderous characters).” Dowling added that he considered it “a globe-spanning thriller about escaping the abstraction of the technological age and finding yourself through physical adversity.”

Unfollow would represent the first project at ABC from DC Entertainment in several years. The connection is unusual only in that ABC’s parent company Disney owns DC rival Marvel, and ABC currently airs Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel’s Agent Carter, with more in the pipeline.

But ABC has been home to plenty of DC-related series over the years, including, famously, the 1960s Batman and Lois & Clark in the early 1990s.

DC’s other current TV projects in development include NBC’s Powerless, Syfy’s Krypton and USA’s Amped.

Should Powerless and Unfollow go to series next season, DC would have shows on every broadcast network. DC and Warner Bros. are currently behind CBS’ Supergirl, Fox’s Gotham (and upcoming Lucifer), and The CW’s Arrow, The Flash, iZombie and upcoming DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.