Last year, Keanu Reeves decided to profit off his own legend with a 12-issue limited comic book series that began being released earlier this year in March. Published by Boom! Studios, BRZRKR was created and written by Keanu Reeves and Matt Kindt and drawn by Ron Garney. It follows an immortal warrior (based on the likeness of Reeves), known as Berzerker (or "B"). Following 80,000 years of his cursed existence, compelled to violence (at the cost of his sanity), Berzerker finds himself working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence...and how to end it.
The comic seems to have been quite the success as Netflix is funding both a live-action movie and an anime series based on the property. Something that is beginning to show real traction as it has been confirmed today that Mattson Tomlin, who recently did uncredited rewrites for Matt Reeves' The Batman, will pen the script for the film. Reeves had this to say on the developing adaptation and Tomlinson's hiring:
"We're working with Netflix who have been very cool. They're going to let us do an R-rated story which is cool. My ambition or hope is not to do a filmed version of the comic book so that they'll have things in common, definitely the main character and his kind of rule set, but that we can take it to other places as well. We're talking to a couple of different animation companies and trying to figure that out. And, again, for me I'm hoping to be inspired and influenced...there are some rules to the story, but I also want other creators to do their version of it. So I'm hoping to do a different version of a metaverse where in the sense having different storytellers with one set of rules but go other places with it. We're working on trying to set up a company with the animation and we've hired a writer for the film Mattson Tomlin. He's been cool and just starting to put things together. That's where we're at."
Tomlin already has a good relationship with Netflix as evidenced by his writing the Netflix film Project Power and is also set to write the upcoming Terminator anime series for the streamer. Stay tuned!
So Keanu as a handsome Deadpool? Got it.
More and more comics feel like Netflix pitches these days.
I just hope John wick 4 will be better than the disappointment of part 3.