With Valiant Comics returning to prominence this year–their new “X-O Manowar” series premieres in May–it was only a matter of time before the popular characters from the comics line created by publisher Jim Shooter in 1992 would start seeing some possible movement on the movie front.
Now, Sony’s Columbia Pictures and Neal Moritz’s Original Film (The Green Hornet) have teamed to acquire the rights to make a movie based on the Valiant Comics series, Bloodshot, a deal that came out of the purchase of a spec script by Jeff Wadlow (writer/director of Cry_Wolf).
The Bloodshot character was the results of experimentation on mob assasin Angelo Mortalli, who was forced into an experimental procedure where his body was injected with nanites that enhanced his strength and skills but erased his memory in the process.
Bloodshot was introduced in 1994 during comics’ “grim and gritty” phase where characters like Marvel’s The Punisher and Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” were dominant with Bloodshot #1 becoming one of the highest-selling comics in Valiant Comics history with a reported 900,000 copies sold. After buying Valiant, Acclaim Entertainment were developing a video game based on the Bloodshot character but that was eventually scrapped. Valiant Entertainment plan on bringing the character back to comics later this year.
At one point, X-Men: First Class and Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn was developing a movie based on Bloodshot, but he’s no longer a part of the equation in bringing Bloodshot to the screen.
