It may have been just a matter of time before Hollywood took notice of a video game like Sloclap’s latest hit, Sifu, but now we’re seeing the evolution of that potential surface this week in new reports detailing the development of a live-action adaptation now in the works.
• Elevate Artist Management’s Paris-based talent agent Florent Lamy is announced a new studio effort to kickoff an ambitious Marvel-style operation to adapt long forgotten French comic book superheroes, including ’L’Archer Blanc’ (The White Archer), and Jean-Yves Mitton’s Mirkos saga and spin-offs therein, to name a few. The adaptations will be for televsion and film in French and English. (Screendaily)
Deadline‘s Alexandra Del Rosario is reporting that John Wick franchise scribe Derek Kolstad has penned a script on spec for a live-action treatment of popular side scrolling video game, Streets Of Rage.
Credit: YouTube Screengrab (FabTV)
It’s been eight years since Ubisoft property, Splinter Cell, began circling the internets and teasing a live action adaptation with Tom Hardy in the Sam Fisher role, whilst changing several hands between producers and writers.
Screenwriter Derek Kolstad is adding to his roster once again for the forseeable with two-handed revenge thriller, The Remainders. Trade sources have all confirmed Kolstad is screenwriting the project, which remains a mystery as far as distinct plot details go, while listed among the now burgeoning production and distribution slate at newly-formed Rakuten H Collective Studio as of Thursday.
The video game movie trend now continues with news at Deadline for upcoming actioner, Just Cause.
STX Entertainment has been stirring quite a bit behind the scenes in the last few years. As such, we can now list some of those prospects courtesy of a new press announcement detailing several new short form series projects for the company’s VR and immersive content channel, STXSurreal which will premiere later this year via apps or VR headsets.
The two of five projects listed include live-action comedy programs featuring Ed Helms, and comedy duo Jason Mewes and Kevin Smth, a.k.a. Jay and Silent Bob. The other three pertain to a different nature more to our liking if you’re a reader of this site and are fully aware of previous reports on Dave Bautista’s STX-related endeavors last October, as well as that of John Wick trilogy scribe Derek Kolstad earlier this year, and the franchise-to-be following the July 20 release of Peter Berg’s Wahlberg/Uwais/Rousey headliner, Mile 22.
UNTITLED DAVE BAUTISTA PROJECT: STX will expand its relationship with actor Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy, Blade Runner: 2049) through an original short-form action-comedy series. STXfilms is concurrently collaborating with Bautista on an action comedy feature film, which is also in the early stages of development.
THE KIEV EXCHANGE: A spinoff of STX’s MILE 22 film franchise, THE KIEV EXCHANGE is a short-form, live-action series from MILE 22 director Peter Berg. Written by Umair Aleem (Extraction, 2017 Blacklist for “Kate”), THE KIEV EXCHANGE is a gritty, pulse-pounding action-thriller following the CIA’s elusive paramilitary force, Ground Branch, as they negotiate a tense and complex hostage exchange in a public square. When all hell breaks loose they must come together to fight their way out of an ambush. Berg will produce for Film 44 and Film 45, along with Mark Wahlberg, Matt Goldberg and John Logan Pierson.
UNTITLED DEREK KOLSTAD PROJECT: From writer Derek Kolstad (The John Wick Trilogy), this original live-action short-form series, set in 1947, follows a mysterious government agent sent to investigate an aircraft crash in rural New Mexico. As he probes deeper, it becomes clear this is no ordinary incident. Kolstad is also writing STXfilms’ upcoming action-thriller Nobody starring Bob Odenkirk.
“This series is truly unlike anything else on TV,” Starz CEO Chris Albrecht said. “The Continental promises to include the thunderous fight sequences and intensely staged shootouts between professional assassins and their targets that fans have come to expect in the John Wick movie franchise as well as introducing some new, darkly compelling characters who inhabit this underground world.”
Kolstad, whose already full plate in the past year currently consists of a third upcoming installment to the current John Wick film franchise along with television spin-off, The Continental, as well as The Steward for Cristal Pictures and a Hitman series at Fox 21 and Hulu, will also executive produce. 87Eleven’s John Wick franchise duo David Leitch and Chad Stahelski along with Kelly McCormick will also executive produce with STX’s Drew Simon and Kate Vorhoff overseeing.
Next to John Wick 3 (2019) and development of The Steward, screenwriter Derek Kolstad’s days of storying narrative projects about badass hitmen are far from over. Going into next year, keep the noted scribe in mind as we look into what lies ahead with word from Deadline of a revival of the popular game, Hitman from IO Interactive.
Kolstad will be penning a pilot script that hews close to the game franchise that centers on 47, a fully engineered clandestine group of genetically enhanced, numbered assassins with trademark barcodes on their heads. Kolstad is also executive producing with Adrian Askarieh and Chuck Gordon for Fox 21 and Hulu with plans to reportedly construct a flagship series.
Bert Salke, Jane Francis, Gloria Fan and Kira Ines are overseeing the show’s development for Fox 21 with Jordan Helman at Hulu. Xavier Gens previously helmed a 2007 feature film adaptation Twentieth Century Fox prior to Aleksander Bach’s 2015 reboot.
Screenwriter Derek Kolstad may have his hands busy building further into the violent world of stoic assassin-turned-agent of vengeance John Wick. With a third film in development and the hopeful attachment of director Chad Stahelski who himself is plotting a TV series spin-off along with a reboot of Highlander among other projects, the Wisconsin-native has become a fascinating favorite among action fans paying close attention to what happens to the brewing trilogy.
I’m inclined to be really dorky here and acknowledge this as the start of the “Baba Yagaverse” – a reference per the 2014 film…
There’s no question that a third chapter in the John Wick saga was in the works. After the riproaring second installment with John Wick: Chapter Two, it was only a matter of time before we would hear from its director, Chad Stahelski, who teased his involvement in the development of the film’s pending trilogical outing with an eye to direct.
For what it’s worth, that still appears to be the case while a new report from THR has otherwise confirmed the return of screenwriter Derek Kolstad to the table. It was he who helped bring the character to life for the 2014 breakout hit from Stahelski and then-directing partner David Leitch with actor Keanu Reeves in the title role.
The sequel, following the events of the first film in which former Russian mob enforcer, Wick, avenges his late wife’s legacy – slighted at the hands of his former boss’s sniveling son – is forced back into the seedy underworld of assassins when a blood oath ensnares him with a mission that ultimately seals his fate in a world run by killers with few friends to count on.
That film stars Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, Common, John Leguizamo and Lawrence Fishburne with a cameo by actor Peter Stormare and is available on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K from Lionsgate. The next chapter is on the fast track toward a production start this Fall from Lionsgate with Basil Iwaynk returning to produce.
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