Warner Bros TV is set to team up with Jerry Bruckheimer to adapt the DC comics limited series Global Frequency for the small screen.
Fox has given the green light for a pilot, which will be scripted by Rockne S. O’Bannon (Defiance, Farscape). The series will follow Agent Miranda Zero, head of an organization devoted to fighting crime, along with a team of over 1,000 anonymous agents from around the world. Although existence of the organization is known it’s members are not, even to each other. Only Miranda and her coordinator Aleph are accessible to all members.
Global Frequency was a 12 issue limited series published by Wildstorm Productions from 2002 to 2004 and was written by creator Warren Ellis. Each issue was illustrated by a different artist, with uniform covers by Brian Wood, and interior artwork colored by David Baron.
This will mark the third time Warner Bros. Television has tried to bring Global Frequency to the small screen. A pilot was filmed in 2005 starring Michelle Forbes and Josh Hopkins but didn’t get off the ground. Another script was developed for The CW in 2009, but that project was abandoned.
Overview
The Global Frequency is an independent, covert intelligence organization headed by a former intelligence agent who uses the alias of Miranda Zero. There are reportedly 1,001 people on the Global Frequency, forming an active smart mob communicating by specially modified video mobile phones through a central dispatch system coordinated by a young woman code-named Aleph.
The purpose of the organization is to protect and rescue the world from the consequences of the various secret projects that the governments of the world have established, which are unknown to the public at large. The people on the Global Frequency are chosen and called on for their specialized skills in a variety of areas, from military personnel, intelligence agents, police detectives to scientific researchers, academics, athletes, former criminals and assassins. These threats that the organization deals with are equally varied and usually world-threatening, ranging from rogue military operations and paranormal phenomena to terrorist attacks and religious cults.
The existence of the organization is an open secret, but its membership list is anonymous, the identities of its field agents unknown to even each other before they meet on a mission. Often the only way to tell a member of the Global Frequency is by the phones that they carry or the Global Frequency symbol—a circle with four points on its perimeter 90 degrees apart—that they sport somewhere on their person.
Who exactly funds the Global Frequency is not known. Zero has said that at least some of the money comes from the G8 governments who pay the Frequency for not revealing the various secret horrors they deal with. Although the presence of an independent, unaccountable agency with strike capability makes some authorities nervous, they also recognize the fact that the Frequency has the skills, the reach and, more importantly, the will to act where they cannot. As a result, the organization gets tacit approval for its activities, and is sometimes called on by governments to deal with extraordinary crises. Mostly, however, the organization acts proactively as it discovers such threats.
Ellis designed the comic series like a television series with standalone “episodes”, allowing the reader to begin with any issue and be able to understand what was going on. As a result, the only regular characters in the series are Miranda Zero and Aleph, with only a few other characters making a reappearance in the twelfth issue of the series. This also heightened the suspense, as the reader did not know if these characters would survive the mission, which sometimes they did not.
Source: DC Wiki, Frequencysite, IGN
