Warren Ellis' 'Black Summer' Optioned By Vigilante
Filed under: Action, Independent, Deals, Scripts, DIY/Filmmaking, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek
Comics legend Warren Ellis is all over Hollywood these days. He has Red in development at Summit, Gravel was just recently optioned by the top-notch crew at Legendary Pictures, and Ocean is in the works with Hollywood Gang, for whom Ellis is also penning a King Arthur script. Now Variety reports that Ellis' miniseries Black Summer has been optioned by the fledgling banner Vigilante Entertainment. Ryne Pearson is set to adapt it for the big screen.Black Summer kicked off in 2007, and walks some familiar Watchmen ground as it examines the darker implications of vigilante heroes. It centers around a superhero team called the Seven Guns, a group of ordinary humans who have willingly undergone severe surgery to become superhuman vigilantes. They take to the streets of a West Coast city to battle a corrupt city government, its equally sleazy police force, and greedy private security forces. But by the time we meet them, those days are gone. But one member, John Horus, decides to go after the man he feels is committing the biggest illegal act of all -- the President of the United States. His violent decision puts the rest of the Guns in danger, In typical Ellis fashion, the blood begins spraying and the bodies drop, and everything becomes very politically murky. If you'd like to see some previews or check out some interviews with Ellis, it's all been neatly collected at Avatar Press' site.
This project is in pre-pre production right now, so it's hard to get too excited as to how (or if!) it will end up on the big screen. But it's great to see more and more of Ellis' work being picked up for adaptations. Let's hope it meets better fate than most of Alan Moore's work.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-02-2009 @ 12:19PM
Keith said...
I love Warren Ellis and this excites me. But what I would really like to see is Transmetropolitan be made into a movie with Patrick Stewart as Spider...stupid rumors. It gave my hopes up.
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11-03-2009 @ 11:35PM
Mark said...
I agree keith, Transmet would be awesome but I'd almost rather have it as an HBO series. That's a lot of story for one movie. I wish Patrick Stewart was younger, or James Carville would play him.
11-04-2009 @ 11:40AM
Keith said...
Oh wow, I never thought of it being a series for HBO...that'd be worth it, like a summer series in the vein of "Angels Of America" and "Band Of Brothers". I don't know, Stewart has been gunning for it so it'd be mean if he wasn't cast. I'd still love to see it. And yeah, I agree, it's too much story for one movie, it'd have to be three movies. The first one being up to the president being elected. The second one being just the beginning of Spider getting the virus and the third being the end of the story line.