Sci-Fi Film and Television Developments

Sleeper
1/21/09 – SCI FI Wire reported that Ed Brubaker, whose graphic novel Sleeper is in development as a film by Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi, said he is happy to let Hollywood handle the movie. Though comic writer Brubaker has written screenplays, including the upcoming Crackle.com film Angel of Death, he considers adapting his own comic above his pay grade.  Brubaker said, "I would love it if they make it, and I want to go visit and everything. I can't imagine on that level working with, like, Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi. I think I would actually feel daunted, and I'd prefer not to feel daunted. Plus, I know that movie's going to cost $100 million. Even if I wrote a draft, I'll be better off letting them hire a bunch of other writers and then send me scripts to fix."  Not to be confused with Woody Allen's futuristic comedy, Brubaker's Sleeper is a superpowered crime story. "Sleeper is a comic I did at Wildstorm that's going back into print this summer, a new special edition. Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi are setting it up at Warner Brothers right now. It's about a guy who is an undercover agent in a giant organization of supervillains, like Donnie Brasco, but he's a supervillain, but the only person who knows he's actually a good guy happens to be in a coma, so he's literally left out in the cold and has to actually become a bad guy to survive among them."  Cruise is set to play the undercover villain. "Having seen him in Collateral, I'm like, 'He could totally do it,'" Brubaker said.  Brubaker has not seen a script yet, but he has been told that it is on the fast track.

10/16/08 - Warner Brothers has tapped Brad Ingelsby to write Sleeper, an adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic being produced by Sam Raimi with Star Road Entertainment partner Josh Donen, Variety reported.  The comic, written by Ed Brubaker, centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass the ability on to others through skin contact.

8/19/08 - Tom Cruise and Spider-Man director Sam Raimi are setting up Sleeper, an SF graphic-novel adaptation, at Warner Brothers, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Cruise is loosely attached to star in the adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic, which Raimi would produce with his Star Road Entertainment partner Josh Donen.  Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, Sleeper--which ran from 2003-'05--centers on an operative whose fusion with an alien artifact makes him impervious to pain and allows him to pass it on to others through skin contact. He is placed undercover in a villainous organization by an intelligence agency and falls for a member of the group, named Miss Misery.

AlienAlmanac.com 2008