Tom King's New DC Comics TV Series Officially Confirms Release Window and Cast [Exclusive]

DC’s next animated couple has a lot more to worry about than keeping their marriage together. Mister Miracle will bring Scott Free and Big Barda into the DC Universe, adapting Tom King and Mitch Gerads’ acclaimed comic about a superhero escape artist whose greatest challenges follow him home. With Josh Hutcherson voicing Scott and Mackenzie Davis playing Barda, the series has an especially exciting pair leading it.

The adult animated adaptation also has King himself overseeing the story, giving the writer another major DC television project after Lanterns. His Mister Miracle comic puts Scott and Barda’s relationship alongside the enormous conflicts of the New Gods, making room for domestic life in the middle of an interplanetary war. Fans waiting to see that combination on screen now have a clearer idea of how the series is coming together.

Ahead of Clayface, Co-CEO of DC StudiosPeter Safran told Collider’s Steve Weintraub that Mister Miracle is targeting a 2028 release, although a premiere date has not been announced. The DC Studios co-chief also revealed that he has already seen animatics for the entire eight-episode season. Asked whether he envisioned the show arriving in 2028, Safran explained, “We haven't actually announced a date for it. We're very advanced on it. I mean, we've seen animatics of the whole season. But I think we've always thought of it as ‘28.” He also indicated that the episodes would run approximately 30 minutes, saying, “Yeah. I think that's what we ended up with," giving viewers somewhat of a picture of the first season’s format, even as its exact release plans remain under wraps.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Superhero Team Should You Join? Avengers · X-Men · Teen Titans · The Boys

Every team is a personality test with a uniform. One saves the world and argues about it the whole way home. One has been fighting for the right to exist since the day it formed. One is still working out who it is while the fighting happens. And one has no powers at all, plus no intention of playing fair. Eight questions decide where you actually belong.

🛡️Avengers(Marvel Studios)

🧬X-Men(Marvel)

🐦Teen Titans(DC)

💊The Boys(Prime Video)

FIND YOUR TEAM →

01

What kind of power would you actually want? The power matters less than what you would be willing to do with it.

ASomething enormous and obvious. I would not hide it. BSomething I was born with, whether I wanted it or not. CSomething still growing that I cannot quite control. DNone at all. I would rather nobody sees me coming.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

Why join a team at all? Nobody puts on the suit for the reason they say out loud.

ABecause some threats are too big for anyone alone. BBecause people like me are safer together than apart. CBecause I did not want to do any of this alone. DBecause somebody has to hold these people accountable.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you feel about the people in charge? Every team has a chain of command. Very few of them survive contact.

AI will follow a good leader and argue with a bad one. BThey have never protected people like me. I expect nothing. CI am still learning who to trust, and getting it wrong. DThey are the problem. That is the entire point.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What is your role inside a group? Every roster needs the same handful of people to function.

AThe big personality. I take up room and I earn it. BThe one who protects whoever arrived most recently. CThe heart. I keep everybody talking to each other. DThe one who says the uncomfortable thing out loud.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

How do you win a fight you should lose? This is the scene the entire film gets built around.

AOverwhelming force, and a very good landing. BWorking together in a way nobody saw coming. CRefusing to give up long after I should have. DPreparation, leverage, and one extremely dirty trick.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What is this work costing you? Nobody does this for free. The bill just arrives differently for everyone.

AMy private life. Everybody knows my face now. BMy safety. The world is frightened of me. CMy childhood. I grew up faster than I should have. DMy peace. I cannot stop now that I know.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

How should the world see your team? Half of this job is public relations, and everybody knows it.

AAs icons. The team everyone is relieved to see arrive. BAs people. Just people, which is all we ever asked. CAs proof the next generation is going to be fine. DThey should not see us at all until it is done.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

The offer arrives. What makes you say yes? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your team.

AThe scale. If the world is ending, I want to be there. BThe promise that I would not have to hide anymore. CThe people. I would be joining friends, not an employer. DThe chance to take down somebody who deserves it.

REVEAL MY TEAM →

Recruitment Is Complete Your Team Is…

Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it would cost you to stay.

The Avengers

You belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart.

• The Avengers are not friends who became a team. They are a team that slowly and reluctantly became friends, and you would recognise every stage of that process.
• You can hold your own among big egos without needing to win every exchange, which is the real entry requirement here.
• The arguing is part of the method. This group does its best thinking mid-disagreement, usually at volume, usually in a very expensive building.
• When the sky opens, they are who shows up. You would want to be standing in that line.

The X-Men

You have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway.

• This is the only team on the list whose central conflict is not a villain. It is being wanted gone by the same people they keep saving.
• You know what it is to be the outsider in a room and to decide, anyway, that you will not make yourself smaller so everyone else is comfortable.
• The X-Men are the most genuine found family in comics. People arrive with nowhere else to go and are never once asked to explain themselves.
• You would not be joining for the glory. There has never been any.

The Teen Titans

You do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an inconvenient side effect.

• Every Titan is somebody's sidekick who decided to stop being one. That decision, not the villain of the week, is what the team is actually about.
• You would be joining people who are all working themselves out at the same time as you, which is far less lonely than being the only one.
• The Titans lose regularly. Then they eat together and come back better, which is a more honest model of growing up than any other team here manages.
• The tower would be loud, chaotic, and the first place that ever felt like yours.

The Boys

You are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it.

• The Boys have no powers, no mandate and no funding. What they have is leverage, patience, and a very high tolerance for consequences.
• You are the person in the room who notices the thing everybody else has quietly agreed not to mention.
• This is not a heroic team and it has never pretended otherwise. It is a group of damaged people doing necessary work in ways nobody would call clean.
• You would not sleep well. You would keep going anyway.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

‘Mister Miracle’ Could Continue Beyond Its First Season

Image via DC Comics

Beyond the production update, Safran explained why he wanted to bring King and Gerads’ comic to the screen. The appeal goes back to conversations with King when Safran and James Gunn first took over DC Studios. For Safran, the book’s impact on readers is a big part of what makes it such an exciting starting point for the series:

“It's always been one of my favorite of Tom King's books. I find it so emotional. When he and I were talking early on, when James and I took this job, he told me that at every convention he goes to, a couple of people come up to him and say, ‘This book saved my life.’ The idea that, ‘How do you survive in today's world, knowing that you're never going to have the answers to the biggest questions out there?’ is just a really great commentary on the human condition and exploration to start with as the basis of the series. I think it's a great on-ramp into the world of Scott Free and Big Barda, the new gods. It's a great way in to start telling those stories.”

King adapted the entire season himself, bringing his own story into animation after working on Lanterns. Safran praised both the adaptation and the experience King gained making the HBO series. He also stressed that Scott and Barda’s emotional story will share the screen with the enormous battles fans would expect from the New Gods:

“But Tom adapted the entire season himself from his book and did an extraordinary job. I'm really excited about the show because it's about something. It's really meaningful, and I think it's going to move people. We always talk about ‘superhero’ in and of itself not being a genre, but there are genres underneath it; this is incredibly emotional but also action-packed because it's got all the battles that are going on on the different planets. It's a really exciting piece.

I think that Tom learned a huge amount creating and executive producing Lanterns, and I think he's brought a lot of that new knowledge to the table when he adapted Mister Miracle.”

Adapting the book does not necessarily mean the show will end with its first season. Asked whether Mister Miracle could continue for multiple seasons, Safran said, “Well, because it's about Scott and Barda and their child, I think there are a lot of places you can go with it. There's no reason why it couldn't be an ongoing season series.”

That leaves the possibility of a longer future for Hutcherson and Davis’ characters, although additional seasons have not been announced. Safran also explicitly confirmed that Mister Miracle is part of the DCU. For now, the first season is targeting 2028, with an official premiere date still to come.

• 

  Hal Jordan

• 

  Aaron Pierre

  John Stewart

• 

  Sheriff Kerry Kane

• 

  William 'Will' Macon