Director R.L. Scott (Champion Road, Call Me King) is revving up at the start of the new year with pre-production on an adaptation of superhuman hybrid creature slayer, Bayne. The character is the longstanding brainchild of actor, martial artist and stuntman Andre “Chyna” McCoy who first conceived the project years ago during his time on the sets of The Matrix and The Matrix Reloaded doubling for actor Lawrence Fishburne.
McCoy arrived from Seville, Spain, in the early 90s in pursuit of a career in Hollywood. Working his way up the film ladder adding further credits like, The One, Universal Solider: Day Of Reckoning, and the Tiger Chen-led Kung Fu Man, McCoy worked to pitch of the character to several producers and writers in hopes of harnessing the project.
Those efforts fell short over the years and McCoy has since continued proliferating the character as a webcomic through his SilverAxe Comics banner which he launched in 2014. However, in an extensively-awaited reversal of fortune, McCoy now finds himself partnering with Scott who has been championing the project with McCoy for the better part of the last thirteen years they’ve known each other.
McCoy previously had a small role on Scott’s 2011 webseries crime thriller projects, Touye Pwen (Kill Point), and the two collaborated once more thereafter on a live-action short concept proof with Josh Hodgins at the helm.
“I just remember when I met him over thirteen years ago, and he had the concept and the white suit.” says Scott of McCoy. “I’ve watched him over the years push hard to get it made but I think the scale and budget might have been a bit big. So last year I approached him with an idea to reinvent the character in a way that fits the times we live in now, in a grounded and gritty way that would feel like this thing could really exist. He dug it.”
Staving off any immediate creative credit however, Scott lauded his partnership with McCoy adding “…ultimately it’s his baby. Everything about this new version spawned from his ideas.”
With Scott now fully in his corner with 2019 underway, the two are officially moving forward with pre-production and the first round of casting as we speak, with a script now completed, and a talent roster that joins McCoy with actress Maxine Goynes (Lillin’s Brood) and actors Doug Roland (Life Hack) and Daniel Juhn (S.W.A.T.) (pictured).
According to the character’s origins, Bayne is a humanoid werewolf dhampir born in Siberia nearly 500 years ago, birthed unwillingly from the blood-thirst of king vampire, Lord Damascus, and the ravenous hunger of a werewolf. Cursed for eternity, pissed off and oath-bound to destroy every living-dead creature of the night until he can find Damascus, Bayne plots a course to bring about Armageddon to the doorstep of the City of Angels.
Going forward, Scott has confirmed to me that the new script will build further on the mythology with a brand new story, “centered on a female detective on a mission to track a serial killer who turns out to hold the key to a world that mankind has forgotten.”
Scott, who is still par for the course by this summer with his latest superhero thriller, Lazarus, which also co-stars McCoy, is directing from his own script, tooled and toned with a vision illustrated as “a totally new and grounded look” with the feel of “a year one story.”
“Bayne is like a God almost, like in the sense of Godzilla.” says Scott. “A wraith that no one sees, that hunts other predators to humankind. It takes place in today’s world, so social media and misinformation shapes the world.”
Just short of diving full-on into details, Scott also states further on the element of social media, iterating per Bayne that “it shows the true effect it’s had on the world and how that may not necessarily be a good thing.”
Bayne hails from Shadow Motion Pictures and Silver Axe Studios, whose Scott and McCoy are serving as executive producers.
With Lazarus in the can and poised to bring lead actor Sean Riggs his latest milestone film role, the film will serve as the building blocks for Scott’s current endeavor: building The Wonder Studios Universe; Scott has accrued interest in number of properties for more than six years in this effort, eyeing a raft of diverse sci-fi and supernatural characters and fantasy stories born and bred from the independently-produced comics circuit.
One such property that will be key in constructing the universe after Lazarus is The Almighty Street Team following an announcement six years ago. That project is still in development while Scott moves forward seperately with Bayne, and crews up to help cook up more content from the Shadow Motion Pictures banner.