According to Deadline, Warner Brothers has made a preemptive seven-figure deal to acquire the rights to Don Pendleton’s The Executioner novel series, in order to develop a franchise around the character Mack Bolan for Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook) to play.
Mack Bolan has been the subject of over 600 novels, beginning in 1969. Pendleton himself only wrote thrity-seven novels featuring the anti-terrorist operative, before selling the rights in 1980 to Gold Eagle, who commissioned ghost writers to continue the series.
Described as “a principled warrior fighting larger-than-life adversaries in the spirit of a tougher American version of James Bond,” Bolan became an expert sniper and earned the nickname The Executioner while in Vietnam as a Green Beret (a detail left out of the contemporary novels, in order to maintain continuity and to keep Bolan from getting too old).
The first film is being written by Avatar 4 scribe Shane Salerno, with The Hangover and Due Date director Todd Phillips being eyed to direct.
A Mack Bolan film franchise has been in the works for years now, and has been shopped around to several big names in Hollywood, from Steve McQueen to Sylvester Stallone, as well as Clint Eastwood and Vin Diesel.
