We have been keeping you up to date on Summit Entertainment’s adaptation of the Wildstorm/DC Comics miniseries RED, a tale of a former black-ops agent, now in retirement, who has to contend with younger, more high-tech assassins who show up to kill him. Now, we’ve had a couple of reactions from both of the comic book’s original creators (Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner).
On Warren Ellis’ Bad Signal mailing list, Ellis said that while the movie’s screenplay is simply “not bad,” the casting of actors like Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, Mary-Louise Parker, Brian Cox and others should make for a very “funny” film.
“Read the ['Red'] script. Not bad,” he wrote. “Not the book, but not bad. Funny. Especially when you know the casting. Very tight piece of work. Talked to the producers last week. They’re all kind of giddy over the casting coups. Who wouldn’t want to see Helen Mirren with a sniper rifle?”
Artist Cully Hamner, also spoke about the casting of RED with Newsarama, saying that while the miniseries only had four central characters, he’s completely fine with the addition of new personalities given the acting talent involved.
“I am totally cool with it, I understand the fact that, when you translate a comic to a movie, there are going to be some things that are either not going to make the translation or are going to add to it and become more than what you did. And with a comic like this that was three issues long — I mean, we’re talking 66 pages — it has to be fleshed out a little bit. So I’m totally cool with that. I am looking forward to seeing it.”
“To get this caliber of actor on board, I imagine the script is pretty good, so it’s going to be real interesting to see. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s going to be cool.”
