Ben Wheat­ley set to take on Frank Miller?

Ben Wheat­ley is in talks to direct a film adap­ta­tion of the three-com­ic 1990 mini-series, Hard Boiled, writ­ten by Frank Miller and drawn by Geoff Dar­row, one of the the con­cep­tu­al design­ers behind the Wachows­ki sib­lings’ The Matrix. With films like 300 and Sin City already the recip­i­ents of lav­ish big screen treat­ments, it’ll be inter­est­ing to see what a gen­uine­ly inter­est­ing and idio­syn­crat­ic direc­tor like Wheat­ley will make of this material.

The sto­ry of Hard Boiled takes place in dystopi­an futur­is­tic Los Ange­les and cen­tres round Carl Seltz, an insur­ance inves­ti­ga­tor who dis­cov­ers his true iden­ti­ty as Nixon, a homi­ci­dal cyborg tax col­lec­tor. A robot chohort informs him that he’s the only one,who can help their march to free­dom from pro­grammed enslavement.

So basi­cal­ly we’re look­ing at a new Sin City type movie with a touch of Blade Run­ner in there – it reads like ripe source mate­r­i­al for an epic on-screen adaptation.

Dead­line reports that Warn­er Bros are in nego­ti­a­tions to acquire the com­ic book film rights. How­ev­er, these rumours have been rum­bling since 2001. Vari­ety report­ed that David Finch­er was set to direct the film after the suc­cess of Fight Club in 1999 with Nicholas Cage in the lead. In 2008, Miller him­self claimed that he would drag it to the screen. Then it was Mukun­da Michael Dewil who stat­ed that he would direct Hard Boiled in 2013. So it’s fair to say there has been a lot of back and forth in terms of who be the one to take on this beast.

The Dead­line report also states that Warn­er Bros are also in talks with Wheat­ley to team up with Tom Hid­dle­ston, the star of his 2015 sleep­er hit, High-Rise. This may be it. We may final­ly have our Hard Boiled direc­tor and star.

Wheat­ley has recent­ly tran­si­tioned into high­er-pro­file genre cin­e­ma with Free Fire, star­ring Brie Lar­son and Armie Ham­mer and due in cin­e­mas April 2017. Since he broke onto the scene with Down Ter­race, Kill List, Sight­seers and A Field in Eng­land, his tal­ent has evolved in unique ways. We are unde­ni­ably curi­ous to see what his strik­ing strain of dark British humour can gel with a big stu­dio bud­get, and with the ascen­dent star pow­er of Hid­dle­ston at his side, there could be no stop­ping them. In the mean­time, here’s the trail­er for Free Fire…