Just days ago the news broke that Avatar** writer Shane Salerno had bought the rights to the Mack Bolan books and was hoping to recruit a director and star to sell the whole package to a major studio. Well, he clearly works fast, because Warner Bros has snapped up the lot with producing partners Bradley Cooper and Todd Phillips aboard to potentially star and direct, respectively.
The books, of which there are over 600 written over 45 years, follow a Vietnam Green Beret and sniper expert who declares war on the Mafia on his return home, after finding that they have torn his family apart. Originally created by Don Pendleton, he's a ludicrously heroic man of action, a sort of American James Bond, with the emphasis more on military know-how than spying skills. The books have gradually moved away from that aging Vietnam origin, however, so expect any film to do the same and - we'd guess - make him an Iraq or Afghanistan veteran.
Cooper has recently been playing a military figure in American Sniper, which would seem like perfect training for this role. That is directed by Clint Eastwood who, ironically, was once in line to play Bolan in the 1980s in a project that Burt Reynolds tried to get off the ground. Steve McQueen, Sylvester Stallone and Vin Diesel have all tried to get versions off the ground with no success, so we will have to hope that Cooper has more luck.
As director, this would be a change of pace for Phillips, but while his non-documentary films to date have all been comedies, scenes in The Hangover films and, especially, Starsky & Hutch have shown that he's comfortable with action.
Phillips' schedule currently appears largely clear save for Arms And The Dudes, a planned comedy about bros who become arms dealers (eh?), which doesn't appear to be very far along, and Cooper's currently at work on the formerly-Chef, briefly-Adam Jones, now-untitled haute cuisine project he's doing for director John Wells. So it looks like this could get off the ground quite quickly given how fast things have moved so far; watch this space for more news.