Just when you’d resisted your last urge to yell at Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin to get back to work, the acclaimed author up and lands another TV series. Martin himself won’t actually be involved, but his voice will certainly be heard in a new TV adaptation of superhero universe Wild Cards.

Martin himself confirmed over LiveJournal (isn’t he adorable?) that Universal Cable Productions has acquired the rights to adapt the various Wild Cards franchises for TV, ideally developing “several interlocking series.” Executive producers include assistant Wild Cards editor and Star Trek: The Next Generation writer Melinda M. Snodgrass, along with Gregory Noveck of RED, Slow Learner, and SyFy Films.

Martin himself remains exclusively attached to his deals at HBO, and thus won’t participate, but here’s how he describes the series:

The shared world of the Wild Cards diverged from our own on September 15, 1946 when an alien virus was released in the skies over Manhattan, and spread across an unsuspecting Earth. Of those infected, 90% died horribly, drawing the black queen, 9% were twisted and deformed into jokers, while a lucky 1% became blessed with extraordinary and unpredictable powers and became aces. The world was never the same. […]
Wild Cards is a series of books, graphic novels, games… but most of all it is a universe, as large and diverse and exciting as the comic book universes of Marvel and DC (though somewhat grittier, and considerably more realistic and more consistent), with an enormous cast of characters both major and minor. There are thousands of stories to be told in the world of the Wild Cards, and Gregory and Melinda and UPC hope to be able to tell many of them.

Martin expressed his hope that the series could progress within the next year or two (as well what characters and stories we could likely expect), but does Wild Cards make sense for TV, with or without Martin’s direct involvement?

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