StudioCanal is teaming up with Taken and District B13 director Pierre Morel to push further in action-thriller territory with The Killer, an adaptation of Tom Wood’s bestselling Victor the Assassin series. The project finds the studio and Morel reteaming with Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman of The Picture Company, the same producers who worked on The Gunman, starring Idris Elba, Javier Bardem and Sean Penn.
No star has yet been announced, but all involved are definitely gunning for a series with The Killer. Wood’s franchise has so far included four novels and one short story, with more volumes on the way. Though the story is somewhat familiar – a nameless assassin is double-crossed and forced to fend for himself – The Killer and its sequels have received strong reviews, with many praising Wood’s writing, the main character and the inventive action sequences.
Here’s the Amazon synopsis for the first book in the series:
Forget James Bond. Forget Jason Bourne. Forget Jack Bauer.
Meet Victor. He’s an assassin – a man with no past and no surname. He lives alone. He operates alone. He’s given a job; he takes out the target; he gets paid. He’s The Killer.
Victor arrives in Paris to perform a standard kill and collect for an anonymous client. He completes it with trademark efficiency – only to find himself in the middle of an ambush and fighting for his life. Pursued by determined enemies, a woman too beautiful to be safe, and intelligence agencies from both sides of the Atlantic, Victor will soon discover there is nowhere left for him to hide…and no one he can trust. But he is every bit as ruthless as those hunting him. And Victor will find out who wants him dead and why – one corpse at a time.
It’s exciting to see a director as skilled as Morel take on any project, but The Killer sounds particularly promising. There’s been a dearth of truly enjoyable action-thrillers at the box office lately, and outside of James Bond, who has been AWOL since 2012, there have also been few charismatic action heroes outside of Marvel.
We’ll keep you posted as more on this adaptation emerges, but for now, colour us intrigued.