Tradecraft: Accident Man Goes from Comic to Movie

Huh! This is a bit of news I never expected to report. But, according to Deadline, the early Nineties indie comic Accident Man is being made into a movie! That’s about as culty as it gets. I was a fan of the comic in its final incarnation, at Dark Horse (attracted by those awesome Howard Chaykin covers), and even I had forgotten about it entirely until reading this. So kudos to someone’s agent! The comic, by Pat Mills and Tony Skinner, originated in the UK monthly Toxic! where it ran three storylines before that aforementioned 3-issue miniseries ended up at Dark Horse. Titan ended up collecting the entire saga in a very handsome hardcover. It was about an assassin who, like The Mechanic, specializes in making deaths look like accidents. Like all of Mills’ work, however, it was satirical, absurd, and quite funny. And despite the fact that the hero is an assassin and not a spy, it seriously traded (especially in that later incarnation) on James Bond imagery (as you can tell by the Chaykin cover pictured) and tropes. The initial Deadline story specifically reported on the casting of Twilight’s Ashley Greene in the female lead, but a quick check of IMDb revealed Scott Adkins (The Bourne Ultimatum, Criminal) listed as playing suave killer Mike Fallon. A few days later, in a separate story, the trade confirmed Adkins as the star, along with Ray Stevenson (The Transporter Refuelled), David Paymer (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit), Amy Johnston (Option Zero), Ray Park (Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever) and Michael Jai White (Black Dynamite). Here’s how Deadline describes the film:

Said to have a Deadpool-esque tone, the story centers on the life of Mike Fallon, a high-class hitman, known for making assassinations look like unfortunate accidents. Fallon’s cavalier attitude changes the day his ex-girlfriend, Beth is murdered. He teams up with Beth’s new girlfriend Charlie (Greene) on a murderous rampage to find out who killed her.

 So "Deadpool" was the magic word used to sell this project, and not the one we usually read about here, "Bourne." Stuntman Jesse Johnson directs from a script by Stu Small,