Variety is reporting that Tim Story, fresh from directing Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, will direct a big screen adaptation of Andy Diggle's Vertigo comic The Losers for Warner Bros.  Story, who also helmed the first Fantastic Four film, will direct from a script by Jamie Vanderbilt, who is rewriting a screenplay by Peter Berg (see 'Vertigo's The Losers Optioned').  (Berg originally wanted to direct The Losers, but decided to helm Tonight He Comes--a superhero film starring Will Smith that is not based on a comic--instead.)

Diggles' The Losers takes its name, but little else, from the 1970s DC military comic written by Robert Kanigher about a group of hard luck GIs that was suffused with the jaded attitudes toward war that characterized the Vietnam War era.  Diggles' Vertigo comic, which ran from 2004-2006, features a black ops team that is double-crossed by their CIA handler.  Story, obviously relishing the opportunity to work with a more human level of heroes, told Variety, 'I am a big fan of war movies like Black Hawk Down or Band of Brothers and this (The Losers) has some of that.'

For retailers, a movie adaptation of The Losers could turn out to be a major opportunity since there are five action-packed The Losers graphic novels to sell.