Warners Goes for the 'Headshot'

French Graphic Novel Trilogy

Variety is reporting that Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to Headshot (Du Plomb Dans la Tete, literally “Some Lead in the Head”), a graphic novel trilogy written by Matz (Alexis Nolent) and published by Casterman.  According to Variety Alessandro Camon has been assigned to write the film, which will be produced by Alexandra Milchan and the Smallville producing team of Alfred Gough and Miles Millar.

Headshot is the story of an unlikely alliance between a hitman and a cop formed after each man watches his partner die.  The action begins with a hit carried out on a U.S. Senator who is entertaining a prostitute in a Bronx apartment.  The cop and the surviving hitman gradually discover they have a lot in common aside from their burning need to avenge their partners.

Milchan and Warners have already optioned another Nolent graphic novel, Cyclops (Cyclopes), for director James Mangold (3:10 to Yuma), and Milchan is also producing an adaptation of Nolent’s The Killer (Le Tueur) at Paramount (see “Paramount Gets The Killer”).  The Killer is Nolent’s first comic published in English.  Archaia Studio Press has been dividing the French albums into two parts and publishing them in the American format on a bimonthly basis.  The first hardcover collection of The Killer from ASP was named the #2 comic of 2007 by Entertainment Weekly and earned the designation of “Best Comic You Didn’t Read in 2007’ from Newsarama. Nolent is currently working on an adaptation of Jim Thompson's noir novel Savage Night with American ex-pat artist Miles Hyman.