With “Kick-Ass” gaining buzz in advance of its April 16th release date thanks to numerous advance screenings that have earned hearty thumbs up with from fanboys and the skeptical alike, director Matthew Vaughn has quickly become a hot property.
Latino Review is reporting that Vaughn has already decided on his project, an adaptation of the now defunct Valiant comic “Bloodshot.” This film will apparently focus on the second of the two volumes of the comic that focuses on “a reanimated government assassin killing machine named Angelo.” Vaughn will be re-teaming with “Stardust” and “Kick-Ass” scribe Jane Goldman. LR says that Vaugn is “fully financing” the film, which we doubt, but we guess that its more likely that he optioned the comic himself. Vaughn intends to cast the film this summer, after which we’re guessing he’ll shop the project around town to find backing, which shouldn’t be too hard to find if “Kick-Ass” performs as its expected to.
All this said, LR has been spotty with their exclusives of late so take it with a grain of salt.
Update: And just like we said… it appears that “Kick Ass” comic book writer Mark Millar is denying this report. He writes, “[Latino Review] claim Vaughn is doing a Valiant book called ‘Bloodshot’ next and not working with me on the Leinil Francis Yu project we’re launching in September. It’s totally insane. I remember Vaughn being offered this months back, but he turned it down along with a number of other projects he was offered and is starting work on the screenplay for the Leinil project in the next couple of weeks. We talked about it on the phone this morning.”
To complicate the matter more. Millar said this weekend that he was offered the “X-Men 4” writing job, but turned it down and Latino Review is saying 20th Century Fox emailed them to say that Millar is essentially lying about being offered that gig. Ah, what a tangled web we weave when…
Btw, apparently “Kick Ass” is not tracking very well which in layman’s terms means not that many regular moviegoers are aware of the film’s existence.