“Nova” Series Tone Like “Starship Troopers”?

The long-awaited Marvel Studios TV series based on the comic “Nova” seemed to finally gain traction last month with a report that Edward Allen Bernero (“Third Watch,” “Crossing Lines”) had been tapped to serve as the showrunner.

The series was said to have “Battlestar Galactica” and “Star Trek” tones and is expected to center on Richard Rider with rumors that Annihilus will be the villain of the series.

Now, scooper @MyTimeToShineH (via CBM) has posted a new report indicating that Marvel has reached out to writers to ask them to pitch a “Nova” TV series with Annihilus as the main villain.

More specifically though, they claim that the show is going for a different tone than previously rumored – less “Star Trek,” more “Top Gun” but with a Marvel wink. This resulted in one pitch leaning heavily on Paul Verhoeven’s fascism satire “Starship Troopers”:

“They also requested the story to feel ‘young and sexy,’ capturing the energy of 80s military movies. One pitch was essentially Starship Troopers, with Richard Rider in Casper’s arc as a sort of cocky jerk who falls in love with Namorita, joins the Nova Corps, and gets assigned to a backwater ‘Outer Rim’-like planet that becomes the first phase of the Annihilus wave.

In the pitch they treated the Annihilation Wave like the bugs in Starship Troopers, really leaning into the theme of how the Nova Corps uses propaganda to police the galaxy and recruit members.”

Former “X-Men ’97” showrunner Beau DeMayo chimed in on the report, claiming the source is legit but adds that pitch was likely an older one. DeMayo went on to outline his idea for the series.

Whatever the case, a “Nova” series isn’t expected anytime soon with producers last year suggesting any such series is about 3-4 years away.

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