Netflix developing adaptation of David F. Walker’s The Hated comic series

I’ve been a sucker for Westerns since day one so I always perk up at any and all news surrounding one of my favourite genres. Deadline has reported David F. Walker’s comic series The Hated has been acquired by Netflix to be developed into a potential live-action series.

Netflix has tapped Michael Starrbury (When They See Us) with serving as showrunner and executive producer of The Hated. The potential series will be a “female-driven post-Civil War revisionist history western” that follows Araminta Free, “a gun-slinging bounty hunter in a world where the Civil War ended differently – instead of a victory for the North, there is a truce, and what had been one country is now two. Araminta specializes in crossing the border into the Confederacy tracking down vicious war criminals, which has made her a woman with a price on her head.” I haven’t read David F. Walker’s comic series for myself, but it certainly sounds interesting.

The Hated was written by David F. Walker and illustrated by Sean Damien Hill and was successfully launched as a Kickstarter project last year. The campaign included one sentence that really sells me on the project: “Imagine if director Sergio Corbucci (DJANGO, THE GREAT SILENCE) made a western starring Pam Grier as a badass, gun-slinging bounty hunter.” Love it. This isn’t the only comic project from David. F. Walker in development as Regina King is set to direct Bitter Root, a comic Walker co-created that follows a fractured family of once-great monster hunters who face an unimaginable evil that descends upon New York City. There’s also Naomi, a DC superhero series executive produced by Ava DuVernay for The CW. The series stars Kaci Walfall in the title role and is set to debut on January 11, 2022.