Valiant Entertainment
Last month we learned that Valiant Comics is getting its own shared-universe mega-franchise, and now we’ve got details on what the first five installments will be. Bloodshot will lead the pack with a movie due in 2017 from John Wick directors David Leitch and Chad Stahelski. They’ll be working with producers Neal H. Moritz (the Fast and Furious franchise), Toby Jaffe (the Total Recall remake) and Valiant’s Dinesh Shamdasani, executive producers Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) and Jason Kothari and a script by Jeff Wadlow (Kick-Ass 2) and Eric Heisserer (the remake/prequel of The Thing). Leitch and Stahelski should bring Keanu Reeves for the lead.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, next will be Harbinger, with a script by Heisserer, followed by one sequel to each of those properties and then a crossover event film titled Harbinger Wars, similar to a comic book from 2013 that only pulled together those two series. There’s still no word on whether the Valiant adaptations Shadowman and Archer & Armstrong already in development will find themselves brought into the fold at Sony, which is so far in a deal to distribute the five Valiant Entertainment brand movies. But they won’t be missed in Harbinger Wars at least, the way Spider-Man was to be missed in Captain America: Civil War when the character wasn’t part of the MCU.
For those who aren’t familiar with these comics, Bloodshot is about an amnesiac soldier for a secret government project who is out to discover the truth about his role as a weapon. He sounds like Jason Bourne, but he’s also basically a zombie, brought back to life and filled with nanobots that help him regenerate as needed. Harbinger is a team-based title involving teens with special powers, such as flight, telekinesis or super strength. It’s likened to X-Men, and so we can all be thankful that the latter property has left the hands of one-time developing producer Brett Ratner.
