Assassins with tattoos are seemingly ten-a-penny, but what about a killer whose body ink can be used to create weapons he plucks from his skin? Yeah, now you’re interested. So is Twilight alumnus Kellan Lutz, who has agreed to play just such an armed type in Tatua.
Developed from an original concept by comic book creators Paul Jenkins and Rob Prior, Tatua will see Lutz as a man with a rare blood type that allows him to be tattooed with special ink. The weapons drawn on his skin can then be pulled off and used. But there’s a caveat: given that the various lethal items are culled from a combo of blood, adrenaline and the ink, they must be used quickly as they start to dissolve. And it goes without saying that the process is not an easy one for the man himself.
But he puts the pain and other worries aside when his son is kidnapped and he goes after those responsible. This is not to be confused, of course, with the Marvel character Tattoo, who appeared in (altered form in) 2005's Elektra, where he had tattoos of snakes that could emerge from his skin.
Producer Rick Schwartz and his Overnight Productions team have hired VFX veteran Aaron Sims to direct the movie, based on the strength of his short, Archetype. With $15 million to shoot, it should be in production next March in Toronto.
“Kellan was in the foreground and the background of the Twilight saga films, but he is a formidable physical presence and this is an opportunity for him to step up,” Schwartz said in a statement picked up by Deadline. “Tatua at its heart is a cool, visually arresting origin story.”
Sims is also developing **Archetype (which you can see below) into a movie, but it sounds like Tatua will be his first feature film.