The film rights for Grant Morrison and Shawn Murphy‘s Joe The Barbarian comic book have been picked up by Thunder Road Pictures, according to Morrison, who broke the news today exclusively to Robot6.

Thunder Road Picture is the studio that put out the 2010 Clash of the Titans remake.

Joe the Barbarian, which is published by DC/Vertigo Comics, is a fantasy set in the mind of a boy who is having some very real world problems, and a film adaptation is going to need an intelligent use of subtlety to capture the brilliant nuance of this fantastic series. I almost cannot image the majority of Joe the Barbarian to be adaptable, as the fantasy plays almost like a kid’s movie, while the grounded-in-reality segments can be terribly depressing. And the concept is even harder to buy into since Morrison is not writing the screenplay himself.

Whenever a comic book mini-series gets picked up for a film adaptation before its completion, I am always skeptical, but in the case of my love for Grant Morrison and this series, I do feel a tinge of excitement even with this small amount of news.