It took less than a month but now BOOM! Studios’ best-selling Keanu Reeves comic BRZRKR is being turned into both a live-action movie and an anime series for Netflix.

BRZRKR news

This is perhaps the quickest pickup ever for a celebrity driven comic – and a sign of how streaming platforms are hoovering up all the IP they can get.

 

brzrkr

According to the PR:

BRZRKR is a brutally epic saga about an immortal warrior’s 80,000 year fight through the ages. The man known only as “B” is half-mortal and half-god, , cursed and compelled to violence… even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge – working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence…and how to end it.

The story of BRZRKR started life as something in The Matrix and John Wick leading man’s head. He had been trying to develop it for years. He decided to turn it into a comic. For the movie version, BOOM! Studio’s has announced initial casting for the Keanu Reeves comic, and it is Keanu’s top pick for the role: himself.

For the anime, which will seek to explore the wider but vowel-challenged world of BRZRKR, Keanu will also be voicing himself…or his character.

In the producer hotseats will be Keanu Reeves; BOOM! Studios Ross Richie and Stephen Christy; and Company Films’ Stephen Hamel. Executive Producer role will include Adam Yoelin of BOOM! Studios.

The debut issue of BRZRKR landed on March 3 and sold quite well: 615,000 copies according to the publisher which is apparently the highest selling launch in around thirty years. It is co-written by Keanu Reeves and actual-for-real comics writer Matt Kindt, with art by Ron Garney and Bill Crabtree, with covers by Rafael Grampá. It will be a twelve-issue series.BRZRKR page

Matt Kindt described the process of working with Reeves on developing the comic at SDCC last year, which we reported:

“Kindt said that, beyond the initial pitch, Reeves has been “so involved” in the creative process, from plotting to outlining and developing the characters. He said he wouldn’t have wanted to work on the project if Reeves was just going to put his name on it and walk away, but that Reeves has brought not just science and research to the project but also the visual storytelling elements. He described hearing Reeves read the dialogue out-loud as “kind of a nightmare” for him as a writer, but said it’s a great test of the writing, and that they both bring something the other is missing to the project.”

Keanu Reeves recently took a star turn in now-hard-to-find, media darling videogame CyberPunk 2077. He also reprised another iconic role of his in Bill and Ted Face The Music, last year. He will return to cinema screens, and HBO Max, possibly later this year (pandemic permitting) in Matrix 4 – which is currently in post-production, and more John Wick movies are in pre-production.