During its advertising upfront yesterday, Netflix announced a TV version of Michael Moreci and Nathan Gooden‘s Vault Comics series Barbaric is in the works, with Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air, X-Men: First Class) and Robert Rovner (Supergirl) attached as showrunners. Like the comic, which debuted in 2021, the fantasy series will follow the adventures of Owen the Barbarian, and his talking axe Axe, who are cursed to only engage in violence for good.
Executive producer and reported Barbaric star Sam Claflin on The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)
Other executive producers attached include Vault’s F.J. DeSanto and Damian Wassel, Jennifer Klein (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor), Javier Grillo-Marxuach (LOST, The Witcher), and actor Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games sequels). When the project was first reported as being in-development two years ago, Claflin was set to star, along with Patrick Stewart as the voice of Axe, and Michael Bay (who subsequently partnered with Vault on Big Rig) was going to direct.
While Stewart, Bay, and Claflin’s appearance onscreen weren’t announced yesterday, The Hollywood Reporter claims we should still expect to be involved, and that their contracts simply haven’t been worked out yet. The show would mark the first drama TV series directed by Bay, who made his TV directing debut with the Investigation Discovery series Born Evil: The Serial Killer and the Savior in 2024.
Bay has been exploring non-fiction lately, with his most recent film being the parkour documentary We Are Storror. The film premiered at the 2025 South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, but still hasn’t received a wide release yet. His last fictional film, Ambulance, was released in 2022, and he previously worked with Netflix on 2019’s 6 Underground. He was most recently attached to another project at the streamer, the Will Smith film Fast and Loose.
No ETA was provided for the show, but based on where it was announced, it should arrive in the near future. In the meantime, the third and final issue of the latest Barbaric comic, The Long Death, is available now. For more from Netflix’s upfront, including news of a KPop Demon Hunters World Concert Tour next year, browse the official press release. Further news from this year’s upfronts included Disney announcing VisionQuest will premiere on October 14, and Prime Video revealing The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will return on November 11.
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