Mr. Reeves will not direct the movie himself. A couple of years ago, Keanu Reeves was considering directing BRZRKR, the Netflix adaptation of the overly capitalized comic book he co-created with Matt Kindt. It would have made him a very busy man indeed, starring in and producing and directing the film. But perhaps that was one role too many. The Hollywood Reporter has the news that, instead, Justin Lin will direct BRZRKR.
This makes a whole lot of sense: Lin is arguably best-known for dramatically revitalizing the Fast & Furious franchise with Fast 5, the film that gave us one of Vin Diesel’s best line reads (“This is BRAZIL!”) and that whole rooftop chase scene and the thing with the safe. And also the Rock. Lin also directed the under-appreciated Star Trek Beyond and has recently returned to his less franchise-y roots with Last Days, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year.
BRZRKR is the story of a violent half-god who stomps around, well, doing a lot of violence. The screenplay is by The Batman’s Mattson Tomlin, and according to THR, is a “brutally epic saga about an immortal warrior’s 80,000 year fight through the ages. The man known only as ‘B’ is half-mortal and half-god, cursed and compelled to violence, even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge — 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.”
It’s very different from John Wick (the fourth movie of which is pictured above). John Wick is not immortal. Right? At any rate, he’d never work for the U.S. government.
B looks like Keanu Reeves in the comic, and sounds like him in the novel Reeves co-wrote with China Mieville. The comic has sold impressively—over 600,000 copies, according to THR—and the novel was a bestseller.
No premiere date for the film has been announced.
