Although he’s not exactly a household name, Mark Protosevich is the man behind the scripts for The Cell, I Am Legend and the upcoming Thor (and we won’t mention Poseidon, as I’m sure he’s ashamed of himself for that one). While he’s already hard at work writing an film adaptation of the videogame Mass Effect, Variety reports that he’s also got a new assignment, and with this one he may make his directorial debut.
Protosevich has been hired to adapt the upcoming comic book mini-series Freakshow. The three-issue special is getting a promotional launch at Comic-Con this week and should be on sale in January, but with comics often seeming more and more like storyboards for an eventual film adaption, a movie version of Freakshow is already in the works.
David Server, Jackson Lanzing and artist Joe Suitor’s comic follows five young heroes who are mutated and given powers following a chemical explosion, and then become torn between a desire for revenge against those that nearly killed them, and fighting for good when supervillains murder the planet’s only superhero.
It’s a passable if slightly generic idea for a comic-book film, with Protosevich also eyeing it as a potential directing vehicle. As yet it doesn’t appear there’s any studio involvement, with the producers (who include Up In The Air’s Sheldon Turner) likely to look for that once a strong script is in place.