Modern comic book movie fans may not be familiar with the Wonder Twins, Zan and Jayna. However, that could soon change in a major way. The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that HBO Max is producing a new live-action Wonder Twins original movie. And this will be the twins’ most significant project in their 45 years of history.
Older fans may remember that Zan and Jayna made their debut in 1977 as the teenage sidekicks of DC’s animated heroes in The All-New Super Friends Hour. Essentially, they were audience surrogate characters who tended to get in a lot of trouble alongside their wacky space monkey, Gleek. The twins are alien siblings from the planet Exxor who have shape-shifting powers that can only be activated when they make physical contact with each other. Zan’s powers are limited to assuming the form of a liquid, while Jayna has more variety with her ability to assume the form of any animal.
The Wonder Twins aren’t exactly headlining characters in the comics, and the Super Friends animated series left them with a bad reputation among some viewers. The only animated project they’ve starred in by themselves was The New Adventures of the Wonder Twins, a series of animated web shorts for Adult Swim. However, those shorts made the Wonder Twins the butt of its jokes. And as you can see below, they’ll need some image rehab to get modern audiences to accept them as stars.
That Herculean duty will fall upon Adam Sztykiel, a first-time director who has been hired to write and helm the Wonder Twins movie. While Sztykiel has no directing credits on his resume, he co-wrote the upcoming Black Adam film (just one of 4 DC films set for release in 2022), and contributed to Scoob!, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul, and Due Date.
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