By Rudie Obias | 7 years ago

Next Friday we will see the release of Oblivion, a science fiction movie from the mind of Joseph Kosinski. But before Oblivion became a highly anticipated action film, it had its origins as a proposed graphic novel that the director used to pitch the film. Now you can see some of the art from the graphic novel version below.

Thanks to the good people at Bleeding Cool, the Oblivion concept art is now available for your viewing pleasure. Several years back Kosinski, Arvid Nelson, and Andree Wallin created a short comic book that was originally supposed to be part of a larger graphic novel. While it was never published, it was used as a way to help pitch the concept of Oblivion to prospective buyers.

The concept art was given away as freebies at San Diego Comic Con in 2010. There were even some plans to actually make the graphic novel, but it seems those plans were scrapped when the movie rights were snatched up. You can even go to the Radical Publishing website, which has the graphic novel listed as “Coming in 2012.”

In an interview with Empire, Kosinski talked about the idea behind creating the graphic novel as a way to help sell the movie:

‘It was just a stage in the project. The writers’ strike occurred in 2007 so I had a treatment for a film but I had no way to actually write it. It couldn’t be written by anyone in the guild so the partnership with Radical Comics allowed me to continue working on the story by developing a series of images and continuing to refine the story more over a period of years. Then I basically used all that development as a pitch kit to the studio. So even though we really never released it as an illustrated novel the story is being told as a film, which was always the intention.’ As for whether we’ll ever see the printed version of the story? ‘I don’t have any plans to do it right now. To me it’s feels like it’s in the rear-view mirror, you know? It’s like part of the development process. The film is the end result. But never say never. Maybe at some point it will be fun to go back and show the steps and the journey.’

Now when you watch the film next Friday and see the credit “Based on the graphic novel by Joseph Kosinski,” you’ll know the story behind that credit.

Oblivion takes place in the distant future and follows the events of a brutal war with invading aliens, after which humanity fled their dying planet. The only man left on Earth is a working-class mechanic named Jack Harper (Tom Cruise), who is stationed on the surface to repair downed drones. But when Jack saves the life of a beautiful and mysterious woman named Julia (Olga Kurylenko), his life starts to tailspin, as her identity becomes the key to Jack’s past and the truth behind the war.

Oblivion will hit theaters everywhere on April 19th, in IMAX.