Mack Bolan is finally heading to the big screen. Sony is developing a feature film based on Don Pendleton‘s The Executioner novels.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Shane Black will write the script for The Executioner with Anthony Bagarozzi & Charles Mondry (Amazon’s Road House). Black is also being eyed to direct the feature.
The testosterone-fueled action movie reteams Black with Joel Silver, the producer behind everyone’s favorite action movies of the 1980s, including the Lethal Weapon franchise. Black wrote the screenplay for the first Lethal Weapon. The pair also worked together on The Last Boy Scout, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Nice Guys.
Executioner was a pulpy book series that told the muscular and bullet-filled adventures of Mack Bolan, a sniper turned one-man army fighting against the Mafia, the KGB, terrorists, and cyber-criminals.
Pendleton was initially the sole author of the books, but ghostwriters were later used, which explains how the series could churn out two books a month. The series ran from 1969 to 2020 for a total of 464 books, meaning there’s no shortage of material for Black to pull from for the upcoming film adaptation.
THR notes that some rights issues with The Executioner made it difficult to bring the book series to the big screen. Those have reportedly been cleared up now, thanks to Angry Films’ Don Murphy and Susan Montford, both of whom will produce with Silver.
Hollywood Has Tried (& Failed) Before to Adapt The Executioner
An Executioner movie has been kicking around Hollywood for decades, with Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, and Steve McQueen having been involved in various iterations. Stallone’s version, according to THR, eventually morphed into Cobra. More recently, Warner Bros. tried to bring The Executioner to the big screen in 2014, with Bradley Cooper attached to star and Todd Phillips to direct, but even that version fell apart due to lingering rights issues.
We’re big fans of Shane Black here in the Wasteland, so we’ll keep you posted as The Executioner comes together at Sony.
Have you read an Executioner book? Do you think Shane Black can do the source material justice?
