Green Lantern may not have helped DC Comics' cinema cause so very much, but there's serious hope for their more grown-up Vertigo imprint on the small screen. Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's noirish crime saga 100 Bullets is to be given the series treatment on the Showtime channel. David Goyer will write and executive-produce.
Running for an appropriate (and award-winning) hundred issues between 1999 and 2009, 100 Bullets involves the mysterious Agent Graves, who begins to arrive in people's lives with a briefcase containing a gun and 100 untraceable bullets, offering law-immune retribution for personal injustices. The series alternates between the individual stories of the people who are given the briefcases, and the bigger picture of Graves, his covert group The Minutemen, and their wider agenda.
It's perfect material for a series, with a huge cast of characters wandering in and out of the various interlocking narratives. And while it's more down-to-Earth than the fantastical narratives Goyer is usually associated with, it's not like he doesn't know comics. He overhauled Blade to great success (at least until the joke that is Blade: Trinity), co-wrote Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, and is involved with Zack Snyder's Man of Steel. His TV CV includes Threshold and Flash Forward, and he's a sought-after (uncredited) Hollywood script-doctor. He probably wrote stuff we have no idea about.
No start dates or further information so far, so presumably 100 Bullets' first mission will be to survive the next pilot season. That may be The Minutemen's toughest ever mission... Watch this space.