Amazon's Next Major Comic Book Adaptation From 'Spider-Verse' Writer Gets "Extremely Positive" Update [Exclusive]
Ryan O'Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided's CubbiesCrib. Whether it's taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what's going on. Outside of entertainment, he's a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor's in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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Prime Video and Amazon Studios as a whole have become a bit of a home for comic book adaptations outside of the titans of Marvel and DC. Between Invincible and The Boys, the streamer hosts the two most popular mature superhero adaptations on television. That's just the beginning of the Amazon platform's plans, though, with adaptations of more Image Comics series on the way, including Stillwater, featuring The Conjuring: Last Rites breakout star Ben Hardy, and Sex Criminals, led by Imogen Poots and John Reynolds. Perhaps forgotten among the series of in-development titles is the Eight Billion Genies movie, which Prime Video picked up at the height of its popularity in mid-2022.
Created by Marvel Comics veteran Charles Soule and Ryan Browne, Eight Billion Genies ran for eight issues from 2022 through 2023, asking one simple question: What if everyone on Earth suddenly had a genie that could grant them one wish? From there, chaos ensues as people race to make their fantasies reality, while others grapple with their ever-changing world and what to use their wish on. Filled with drama, heart, and pure insanity, it primarily centers on a group of strangers who just so happen to be in a small Michigan bar when the genies arrive. Amazon Studios quickly snapped it up in an ambitious deal with hopes of making a cross-media universe, starting with a film and moving to series and more. It wasn't until 2024, though, that reports surfaced of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's Point Gray banner coming aboard to produce, alongside a writer in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Oscar winner Rodney Rothman, and since then, things have been mostly quiet.
That was until FanX Salt Lake City, where Collider's Maggie Lovitt asked Soule in an interview about the status of Eight Billion Genies. Not only did he confirm Point Gray's involvement, but he shared that Rothman is several drafts deep into the development process. Soule and Browne, who are executive producers on the film, recently read it over the summer and are now in a holding pattern, but from the sound of it, hopes on all sides are that these genies begin shipping out sooner rather than later.
"The latest update on Eight Billion Genies is that Amazon Studios has been developing it as a film with Point Gray as the producer. So that's Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and those guys. They have been working very hard on it. Rodney Rothman wrote a phenomenal script that Ryan and I got to read in June. Actually, we read the latest draft, which I think was the — I don't know — it's several drafts in, so it's very polished. It's a hell of a script, and now we're just waiting to see what happens next. So, everything so far has been extremely positive. The talent behind the scenes on it is, you know, it's like your dream come true. So I don't know. We all love Eight Billion Genies. Everybody on both sides, whether it's Amazon or Point Gray or, obviously, Ryan and myself and I think we'd all love to see it on a screen sometime soon."
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes What MCU Superpower Would You Have? Strength · Spider-Sense · Invisibility · Chaos Magic
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: your first instinct when things go wrong, what your friends rely on you for, how you handle stress, what your real flaw is. Answer them and we will tell you which power you would wake up with. The best ones in the MCU are never random, because they always say something about the person who got them.
💪Super Strength(Hulk)
🕸️Spider-Sense(Spider-Man)
🫧Invisibility(Fantastic Four)
🔮Chaos Magic(Scarlet Witch)
01
What is your first instinct when something goes wrong? Go with the honest answer rather than the heroic one.
02
How do you handle being the centre of attention? Every hero on this list answers this differently.
03
What do your friends rely on you for? They would all name the same thing about you.
04
How do you deal with stress? Nobody picks the healthy one, and that is fine.
05
What is your actual flaw? The useful thing here is picking the true one.
06
What kind of help do you actually give people? Everybody has one default, whatever the situation is.
07
How do you want strangers to see you? Answer for the first ten minutes, not the first year.
08
What would you want a superpower for? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your power.
The Gift Is Given Your Power Is…
Four powers, and four completely different kinds of person behind them. Here is what you would wake up with, what it would cost you, and why the MCU keeps handing it to somebody exactly like you.
Super Strength
You get the power that is really about taking the hit so that nobody else has to. Strength in the MCU always lands on people who were already carrying too much, which is exactly why it suits you.
- Your instinct is to put yourself between the problem and the people, and you do it before anybody has thought to ask.
- Bruce Banner is the most interesting version of this because his story was never about lifting things, it was about control.
- The catch with strength is that people stop checking whether you are alright, since you have made a habit of looking like you always are.
- You would be the one everybody calls at two in the morning, and you would answer every single time.
Spider-Sense
You get the power that never switches off. Spider-sense is a gift and a nervous system on permanent alert, and the people who get it in these films are always the ones who were already worrying about everybody.
- You read a situation faster than you can explain it, and you are usually right in a way you cannot show your working for.
- Peter Parker is the template because he takes on more than he can hold and then apologises for not holding it well enough.
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day arrived in July 2026 and put him back to being local, broke and permanently on call.
- The cost here is real, since a power that warns you about everything also means you are never quite off duty.
Invisibility
You get the quietest power in the building, and quietly the most useful. Invisibility comes with force fields for a reason, because the people who prefer not to be seen are usually the ones holding a shield around everybody else.
- You notice everything, largely because you spend more time observing a room than performing in it.
- Sue Storm is the strongest member of her team and the least interested in anybody saying so, which is very much your energy.
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps finally gave the family a proper MCU home in 2025 and made her the centre of it.
- Your risk is that being unseen becomes a habit rather than a choice, and the people who love you would like a look in.
Chaos Magic
You get the biggest and least comfortable power on the list, the one that runs directly on feeling. Chaos magic is not really a superpower in the MCU so much as an emotional state with consequences attached.
- You feel things at a volume other people do not, and you have spent years managing that rather than being managed by it.
- Wanda is the best written character Marvel has, precisely because her power and her grief turned out to be the same thing.
- WandaVision remains the high point of Marvel television, and it works because the spectacle is only ever a symptom.
- The warning attached to this one is simple. A power that answers to how you feel is only ever as steady as you are.
The 'Eight Billion Genies' Script Evolves Its Source Material
Having seen Amazon's success in adapting other comics, especially fellow Image series Invincible, Soule feels comfortable having his and Browne's series in their hands. However, it will never not feel "extremely surreal" in his mind to see his work come to life, and he expects the same feeling with Eight Billion Genies. He reflected on his experience watching the serial killer Muse, whom he created with artist Ron Garney in their Daredevil run, be adapted to Disney+'s Daredevil: Born Again with such stunning accuracy to the comics that he almost felt uncomfortable.
"Ron and I created this character named Muse. We did a big run on Daredevil together, which essentially was basically one-to-one adapted for the Daredevil: Born Again show. And so we both got to go to the set. We got to see the way the props people put together Muse's lair. Like, it is very surreal because it's lived in your head, and then it lives on the page, but it really is mostly living in conversations with Ron, and then to see other people interpreting it was wild. It was weird, but then you get this real sense of, I don't know... You feel like you're being honored, almost because of how respectful they were when they did it. They didn't, you know. Muse looks like Muse. His lair looks like his lair. It was amazing. David Mack, who's another incredible artist friend, did all of Muse's, like, art pieces in the show. Which, I mean, David Mack's incredible. The fact that they got him to do that. I don't know. It felt great, but it's also always a little bit weird, to be honest."
However, Rothman's plans for Eight Billion Genies aren't as one-to-one as that. "Reading the scripts for Eight Billion Genies is like, well, this is the story that Ryan and I made, but it's also not," Soule continued. For him and Browne, there was an undeniable feeling that they were letting go of their baby and letting someone else apply their vision so drastically that it no longer felt like theirs. While that was a scary experience, he's still a fan of the direction Rothman is taking, applying experience not just from the Spider-Verse, but also from 22 Jump Street and beyond.
"Rodney, who's incredible, did a great job. He made choices, and you have to make choices when you're adapting to another medium, and it's fine. But it felt like, you know, like Through the Looking Glass a little bit, like this is our thing, but it's also not our thing, and so there's a little bit of a letting go you have to do, but also it's kind of awesome. I mean, Rodney, who won an Oscar, right, for writing screenplays. We could do a lot worse."
Eight Billion Genies remains in development at Amazon Studios. Stay tuned here at Collider for more on the film adaptation as news comes out. You can watch Lovitt's full conversation with Soule below.
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