200806121320THR reports on DC Comics’ Red getting big-screen treatment. It’s based on the Warren Ellis/Cully Hamner 3-issue mini of a few years agp and very significantly, it is being developed by indie studio Summit Entertainment NOT Warner Bros., although DC”s Gregory Noveck will serve as exec producer. Ellis follows up with his own comments:

For another, RED is more of a graphic novella, a short and tight book, and a novella doesn’t fill out a film’s running time all on its own. This is an adaptation, not a direct transfer/translation from page to print. What the screenwriters will do is take the core concept of RED — a troubled old man still having nightmares of his role as his government’s monster suffering an attempted murder at the remote hands of a terrified political appointee, and bringing the world of covert assassination back to the agency who wanted to drop him and his body down an Orwellian memory-hole — and expand upon it. The book is, if you like, a folded shape that can unpack into a film. And I’m fine with that. Summit bought the right to build upon the story. My only niggle, frankly, is that the news story calls it a Wildstorm/DC book first, and not a Warren Ellis/Cully Hamner book, which is what it is. We went with Summit because they make films like INSOMNIA and MEMENTO with people like Christopher Nolan (and they produced FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, too).

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1 COMMENT

  1. Warner distributed INSOMNIA.

    INSOMNIA, of course, was an inane cop-out, given the superior source material.

    As for Summit… Word UP! STEP UP, STEP UP 2, THE HOTTIE AND THE NOTTIE!

    Who doesn’t want to see Paris Hilton dance in a Warren Ellis adaptation?

  2. I loved Nolan’s Insomnia, though that’s without having seen the Norwegian original.

    Lots of weird script convergence for Ellis these last few weeks, isn’t it?

  3. Who doesn’t want to see Paris Hilton dance in a Warren Ellis adaptation?

    Can Jason Mewes be the political appointee that orders the old agent? (I think he was in that Hilton flick)