Clearly sick of all these modern-day superheroes, what with their psychological issues, personality flaws, and general inability to be a pure slab of prime, Grade-A man beef, Sony Pictures TV has announced that it’s putting a show about old-school pulp hero Doc Savage into production. And if you’re sitting around asking yourself, “Who the hell is Doc Savage?”, well, don’t worry, youngsters: Your grandparents are probably super horny for this news.
Originally created in the 1930s by magazine publisher Henry Ralston, editor John Nanovic, and writer Lester Dent, the character is a bit like Indiana Jones, were Indy not possessed with a wide collection of humanizing weaknesses and frailties in order to give his stories some measure of conflict. A brilliant detective who also happens to be a world-class athlete, scientist, archaeologist, and humanitarian, Savage is often held up as a forerunner of the modern superhero. Basically, there’s no real plot complication or supervillain scheme that can’t be solved by the Doc—including the problem of evil itself, since Savage stories often ended with him performing brain surgery on his villains in order to remove their anti-social personality traits entirely. (Big Brother is watching, friends, and he’s almost always busting out of his shirt.)
This new Doc Savage production was originally envisioned as a movie by producer Neal H. Moritz (complete with the no-brainer casting of Dwayne Johnson in the title role), before all involved decided the larger-than-life character might be better suited to a smaller screen. Per Deadline, the series is being produced by Moritz’s Original Film studio, which has also been responsible for well-received comic book adaptations like The Boys, Preacher, and Happy!. There’s no word yet on where the series itself might land; the character last appeared in the audio-visual sphere back in 1975, when Ron Ely played him in Doc Savage: The Man Of Bronze.