The Dream of the 90s Lives: Sony Adapting Valiant’s BLOODSHOT

One of the standard bearers of everything bad about 90s comics is coming to the big screen.

If you're a comic book nerd of a certain age you'll remember the chromium cover of Bloodshot #1. Hell, you may have 12 copies sitting in your garage, worth about six cents combined. Bloodshot was, for me, the character and book that personified the flameout of the comics boom and the dead end aspect of the grim n' gritty character. Once a mobster, Angelo Mortalli entered the witness protection program and was forced into a secret experiment where his memory was erased and his blood replaced with nanites. Essentially he became the ultimate mixture of Wolverine and The Punisher, two of the most abused (by fans) characters in comic history. The first issue of his comic had a chromium cover, everybody bought a zillion because comic speculation was the big thing at the time and then we all realized that if EVERYBODY had a dozen copies there would be no resale market.

Sad trombone.

Bloodshot went on for about 70 issues as the once grand Valiant Universe became a turdbowl. And then everything fell apart and these characters all went away.

Until now! Sony Pictures has spent a bunch of money to acquire the character for Neal Moritz (who, after years and years and years of trying, has finally begun to make some good movies). At one point Matthew Vaughn was attached, but I guess he's out of the picture now. And so the range is wide open to any director who wants to try his (or her) hand at an uninteresting, derivative, killing machine character with a tie-in to the more interesting Rai.