Deadline is reporting that Kamala Films has acquired the rights to the influential 1970s manga ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’. Attached to direct is Justin Lin, who has directed the best installments of the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise and some of the best episodes of NBC’s meta comedy ‘Community’, from a script written by David and Janet Peoples, who penned ‘Twelve Monkeys’. David is also responsible for co-writing ‘Blade Runner’, the sci-fi cult classic from director Ridley Scott.
On collaborating with the Peoples on this seminal work, Lin says:
“I’ve long admired the Peoples and their enduring body of work. They’re a wonderful match for Lone Wolf and Cub and I’m really looking forward to collaborating with them on this powerful, epic tale.”
Created by writer Kazuo Koike and artist Goseki Kojima, ‘Lone Wolf and Cub’ tells the story of a Shogun’s executioner turned assassin named Ogami Itto who sets out for revenge along with his three year old son, Daigoro, after he’s been falsely disgraced by the Yagyu clan.
Originally published in Japan, the story was first released in North America in 1987 by First Comics, but due to the company closing in 1991, the series was never completed. In 2000, Dark Horse Comics started releasing paperback volumes of the series with all of Frank Miller’s original covers from the First Comics run, then later with covers by Bill Sienkiewicz, Matt Wagner, Guy Davis, and Vince Locke.
Over the years, there have been a few film, television, and video game adaptations of the manga in Japan. At one point, Darren Aronofsky tried to get a Hollywood movie adaptation off the ground, but things didn’t work out. Now, we have the very excited director of ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’ and ‘The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift’ working on it, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. I’m sure we won’t get the extreme violence accompanied by spurts of blood everywhere that we got from the films from the 70s, since Tarantino isn’t making the movie, but it will be interesting to see the Asian American director’s take on the material.
