Comic Book Anti-Hero 'The Darkness' Gets Big Screen Treatment

Comic book movies have been big for a while now but it wasn't until the phenomenal success of "The Dark Knight" that studios started seriously looking into the darker and grittier comic book properties. 24 Frames has reported that the latest to take a crack at adapting such material will be Mandeville Films. They are partnering with Top Cow Comics to bring "The Darkness" to the big screen.

Created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis, and David Wohl, the Darkness is one of the elemental forces of the universe and it embodies a male host granting them tremendous and deadly powers. The current host for this entity is Jackie Estacado, a hard living mob hit man. While it has been with him his entire life the Darkness manifests itself on Jackie's 21st birthday. Though the Darkness grants Jackie many deadly skills that aid him in his mob lifestyle it comes with some drawbacks. He can conjure weapons and even demons made of pure darkness but they are destroyed by contact with light. Jackie must also contend with being at constant odds with the Angelus, a being of light who inhabits a female host and is the polar opposite of the Darkness. Much to his dismay he also has to refrain from sex because if he conceives a son the Darkness will instantly pass onto the offspring and Jackie himself will die.

This is not the first time that a studio has attempted to bring this particular character to the big screen. Dimension films tried to get a film off the ground in the earlier part of the last decade. However around the same time the sales for the comic book itself began to decline and the project stalled. Part the renewed interest in bringing the Darkness to theaters is likely due to the success of the video game based off the character, for which a sequel was recently confirmed. The games were praised not only for the gameplay but also for capturing the darkly comedic aspects of the comic book as well.

At present only the rights to make a movie have been acquired. There has been no hiring of a director, star, or even a writer. Mandeville Films hasn't even made it clear as to when they would hope to get the film into theaters. The studio has been making a rather rapid transition into comic book movies. They previously acquired the rights to two other Top Cow properties: "Alibi" and "Crosshairs." However there have been no major announcements regarding those properties since they were acquired. Top Cow has other adaptations in the works, most notably "Witchblade." In the comic books the Witchblade is actually the offspring of a one time union between the Darkness and the Angelus, but since the film is set up at a different studio there will not be any cross over between the two projects.

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