In an ideal world, comic book artists would sell their creation’s rights to someone akin to Matthew Vaughn who will make a restrictions-free independently produced adaptation which will THEN be sold to studios. Is KICK-ASS the exception, or the dawn of a new era?
As was hinted to our own gal Niki Stephens when visiting Comic Con, Universal has acquired the rights to Dark Horse’s CRIMINAL MACABRE, to be penned by rookie scribe Kyle Ward. The story centers on 30 DAYS OF NIGHT creator Steve Niles’ character of Cal McDonald, a paranormal investigator whose drug addictions and ghoulish surroundings make Keanu’s Constantine look like a Sesame Street denizen. AND he’s modeled after Tom Jane, so casting is pretty much a no-brainer…
Hope for the character’s integrity to remain on film resides in Niles’ own refusal to let studios make Cal PG-13. “Every studio I’ve tried to set it up with wants to clean him up,” Niles said in interview a while ago. “We’ll find someone who will make it that way, and if not I just won’t sell.” Here’s to assuming his selling of the rights omits the word “out”…
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