The Emmy winner already has a feature version of Jack Kirby's New Gods underway & now she's going dystopian with the acclaimed 2005-2012 series

Hot off a big Emmy win for When They See Us, Ava DuVernay is set to launch her second project based on a DC Comics property

Already primed to directed a big-screen adaptation of Jack Kirby’s New Gods, as Deadline reported last year, Oscar nominee DuVernay now is getting behind the camera for HBO Max with the DMZ pilot the soon-to-be streamer has ordered.

Adapted from the Brian Wood-written comic published by the Vertigo imprint, the pilot imagines a second American Civil War in the near future. The A Wrinkle in Time helmer will direct the project with showrunner and EP Roberto Patino writing. Prophetically well timed if Monday’s tweetstorm by Donald Trump is any roadmap, the Manhattan-set DMZ will be produced by DuVernay’s Array Filmworks in association with Warner Bros. Television.

“DMZ is a special project to me as it marks a key collaboration with my company Array Filmworks, the excellent team at Warner Bros TV and the dynamo Roberto Patino,” DuVernay told Deadline today of the new project for the longtime comics fan.

Patino Shutterstock

“We’ve all worked diligently on this material, and I’ve witnessed Roberto in action,” the 13th director added of her Westworld EP collaborator. “He’s insanely talented and cares about telling stories with maximum impact and imagination. I’m eager to share this one with DC fans.”

The original DMZ takes place in a nation torn apart by the uneasy détente between the remains of the federal government and the secessionist Free State armies. With art by Riccardo Burchielli and printed by DC Comics under its Vertigo imprint from 2005-12, Wood’s story is centered in the sparsely populated demilitarized zone of what once was Manhattan.

The Patino-penned adaption is said to center on a female medic on the island who is trying day-in and day-out to help keep residents alive while trying to also find her lost son. In the process, that determined medic proves a source of hope in an America that has lost all sense of the idea.

2019 HBO Max Pilots & Series Orders

Both DuVernay and Patino have overall deals with Warner Bros Television, which were inked in September and November 2018, respectively.

Production on the DMZ pilot is scheduled to begin in early 2020 — or just a few months before the WarnerMedia-owned HBO Max launches.

Patino is repped by 3 Arts.