Broken Frontier

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer director Tim Story is manning the adaptation of DC/Vertigo’s The Losers for WB. Jamie Vanderbilt is penning the script.

Both The Hollywood Reporter and Variety reported on the news this weekend. The movie will be produced by (among others) Peter Berg, who also wrote a first draft of the screenplay, and John Cameron, who brought the project to Berg’s Film 44.

The series ran for 32 issues from June 2003 through January 2006, and dealt with an ex-C.I.A. squad gone underground after a corrupt branch of the Agency—known as The Company—attempted to take them down in the midst of a special ops mission. The Losers was a revival of a 1970s concept also published by DC, and rapidly became a hit with readers. Not unimportantly, the critically-acclaimed title was also responsible for putting U.K. talents Andy Diggle and Jock on the map.

Story became involved not knowing the project was another comic book adaptation. "I told my agents I didn't want to do another comic book. I had been in the world of fantasy and I wanted to do something very edgy, a realist action movie. I wanted to find something like a Bourne Identity or Black Hawk Down and this has some of that. I was looking for a vehicle that would have that edge, but I didn't want to lose my personality, which is a bit tongue-and-cheek, where the characters have a little fun with each other."

Although post-production on FF2 has only wrapped very recently, Story has said he’s going full-steam ahead on The Losers, and that the casting process will begin in no time.

And for more on FF2 and Tim Story, check out today's entry on Frederik Hautain's Behind The Panel  blog.