Shazam! (film) early 2000s, with multiple screenplay drafts by William Goldman, the team of Alec Sokolow and Joel Cohen, Bryan Goluboff, and John August. The version of the "Shazam!" script written by August, which went into pre-production in 2008, was an action-comedy which focused on the origin story of the hero, then known by his original name of Captain Marvel, and his young alter ego, Billy Batson. Peter Segal was attached as director and actor Dwayne Johnson was in talks to appear as the film's villain, Black Adam. The "Shazam!" film was being produced by New Line Cinema, which was absorbed into
The Killers (Bukowski short story) influenced by Hemingway, as he it be seen as a logical outgrowth of the attitude expressed by Hemingway's fictional alter-ego Nick Adams at the end of the 1927 "Killers": Bukowski's fiction is full of attempts to escape the Los Angeles of his childhood and teen-years, all of which are doomed to failure as his fictional alter-ego, Henry Chinaski, finds the same appalling corruption everywhere he travels. In Bukowski's "The Killers", there is no escape for the murderers who are the protagonists of the story, mirroring the doomed boxer Ole Andreson in Hemingway's original. The Killers (Bukowski short story) "The Killers"