Garth Ennis’ comic Crossed will become a really sick and violent movie

Writer Garth Ennis has had a long successful career in comics, but not quite so much luck in Hollywood.

While adaptations of his books PREACHER and THE BOYS slowly claw their way through Development Hell, his Avatar series CROSSED is skipping that process altogether.

The obscenely violent post-apocalyptic book is coming to life courtesy of producers Michael De Luca, Jason Netter and Kevin Spacey’s Trigger Street Prods., who are raising independent financing for the project. The producers obviously hope this creative freedom will help the finished product follow the KICK-ASS model by catching fanboy buzz and a lucrative distribution deal.

In the comic, an unexplained virus infects mankind, manifesting physically with a strange cross-shaped rash on the face of its victims. The disease, spread through bodily fluids, causes these “Crossed” to lose impulse control and perform unspeakable acts of sadism against the uninfected (like, say, beat them to death with a severed horse penis). The story follows a dwindling group of survivors searching for a safe haven while evading a particularly tenacious group of the Crossed.