Keen Gear! Darkwing Duck Reboot In Development At Disney+

Excellent news for fans of Darkwing Duck who have been hoping the show would come back….we can finally confirm it’s happening. Variety reported this morning that a Darkwing reboot is now in development for Disney+.

This time, instead of Tad Stones, the project is being overseen by Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, and Alex McAtee of Point Grey Pictures. Having the same team that’s behind Amazon’s The Boys working on Darkwing feels a bit odd, but we can think of worse hires, and Rogen and company are usually passionate enough about their source material to keep it faithful.

The original Darkwing Duck ran in syndication via the Disney Afternoon and on network TV via ABC. It was popular enough to retain the second-highest number of episodes for any Disney Afternoon show at 91 (DuckTales remains the king with 100). Darkwing juggled his night job as an egotistical superhero with his domestic life raising adopted daughter Gosalyn, and had to face a creative rogue’s gallery including an electricity-obsessed rat, a jester who wields deadly toys, and a dog made of water that talks like a TV commercial announcer 24/7. Oh yeah, and Ammonia Pine.

Darkwing has had an active presence in the DuckTales reboot running on Disney Channel and Disney XD, but in that version the Darkwing universe is a fictional TV show the nephews are fans of, and the series’ actor, Jim Starling, goes a bit mad and becomes Negaduck, forcing another actor (who happens to be named Drake Mallard) to actually become Darkwing and save the day. Then Darkwing’s villains from the TV show were teleported to the “real” Duckburg and Drake had to team up with Launchpad and….well, it’s all a bit complicated, but we eventually got there.

The new Darkwing is still in development and has no current actors, artists or writers attached, nor has it technically received a series commitment. We’re really hoping the project goes far enough that we can report on it again. We want this!