Netflix Developing a Battle-To-The-Death Thriller Called BUTTON MAN with 42 Director Brian Helgeland

Netflix is producing a film adaptation of the the graphic novel, Button Man: The Killing Game. They’ve also hired Brian Helgeland to write and direct it. He’s best know for directing A Knights Tale and 42 and has also written scripts for a ton of films such as L.A. Confidential, Mystic River, Green Zone, Robin Hood, and more.

For those of you not familiar with the story, it is about a man named Harry Exton, an ex-mercenary who is a "Button Man" which is a hired killer pitted against other killers in an underground sport. Each works for a mysterious "Voice", a rich man of unknown identity. The object of the game is to kill your opponent, or capture him and take his marker - the first two joints of a finger. Button Men who lose three fingers are shot anyway. The "voices" profit from the game by gambling on the outcome, and a ruthless killer like Harry Exton can make a modestly wealthy man extremely rich. Exton decides to quit, only to discover that leaving the Button Man game isn't so easy.

Button Man sounds a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action film, The Running Man, and it could be a cool film project, one that is a good fit for Helgeland. The comic was created for the British comic 2000 AD, which is the same publication that gave us Judge Dredd.

DreamWorks owned the movie rights for years and back in 2012, Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn was in talks to direct it. Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored to possibly star. That obviously didn’t work out, but it looks like things are moving forward now with a different team of talent.

This is actually a project that I’m looking forward to seeing get made. What do you think about Netflix and Helgeland teaming up for the film adaptation?

Source: Variety