Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of King Kong’s debut, and right now’s a great time to be a fan of the giant gorilla. Kong has been one of the MonsterVerse franchise’s anchoring Titans alongside Godzilla, with the two of them exchanging blows last year in the aptly-named Godzilla vs. Kong, and there’s an animated series called Skull Island coming to Netflix subscribers that will follow a group of shipwrecked characters trying to survive on Kong’s original home. Now today brings word that a live-action King Kong streaming series is in development, but there’s a twist: it won’t be connected to the MonsterVerse.
Disney+ has reportedly closed a deal with James Wan’s Atomic Monster Productions to put together this King Kong series. Paper Girls creator Stephany Folsom is writing the project, which will, as Deadline describes, “explore the mythology of King Kong’s origin story and the supernatural mysteries of his home,” and will specifically pull from Merian C. Cooper’s original stories and new King Kong novelizations by artist Joe DeVito. THR clarified in its own report that Disney+’s King Kong will not have any ties to the MonsterVerse franchise. Folsom and Wan will executive produce alongside Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Rob Hackett, as well as Dannie Festa from World Builder Entertainment.
Should this King Kong series move forward, it’ll be the first time this beast has led his own live-action TV show. However, this isn’t the first time such a project has attempted to get off the ground. King Kong Skull Island was previously in development five years ago from MarVista Entertainment and IM Global Television, and while a different creative team was working on that project, it was pulling from the same source material mentioned earlier. King Kong Skull Island never moved forward, but now there’s a chance that people with a Disney+ subscription will be able to watch the gorilla wreak havoc under the Mouse House’s entertainment umbrella.
Although Deadline described Disney+’s King Kong as a “serialized action-adventure drama that brings the classic monster story into the modern age,” it’s unclear if this means the show will be set in the present day or if it will be another period piece infused with modern sensibilities. While this King Kong will not be the same one we’ve been watching in the MonsterVerse, the new series’ premise does sound similar to 2017’s Kong: Skull Island and the Skull Island Netflix show, in that it seems that it will be primarily set at the title location. Beyond that, we’ll just have to wait and see how this King Kong series stands out from what the MonsterVerse has been providing, but if that franchise’s take on the popular monster hasn’t appealed to you, maybe this Disney+ show will fare better.
Once concrete details start coming in on Disney+’s King Kong, CinemaBlend will pass that information along. In the meantime, the MonsterVerse’s King Kong is set to return in the Godzilla vs. Kong sequel, which is slotted for March 15, 2024.
