If you haven’t read Richard Kadrey’s bruising, funny and dark hardboiled noir Sandman Slim novels, we highly recommend that you pick up a copy of the first instalment as soon as possible. If you have read them, you’ll be very excited to hear that the film adaptation just took a big leap forward.
Deadline reports that John Wick co-director Chad Stahelski (who went solo for the sequel and upcoming third movie) has been “tapped” to direct Sandman Slim, with Studio 8 hoping to launch a franchise (there are eight books, to be fair). The current draft of the script is being written by Kerry Williamson (What Happened To Monday?).
Sandman Slim “centers on James ‘Sandman Slim’ Stark, a fast-talking, hard-boiled, supernatural vigilante who escapes from Hell to avenge his girlfriend’s murder and hunt down the magicians responsible for getting him sent ‘downtown.'” It’s a LA detective noir that also has a ton of monsters, angels and demons in it, and it’s hugely entertaining. Stahelski’s obviously got an eye for action, and one of the things that makes the John Wick films so great is that they exist in a stylised, idiosyncratic world of their own with clearly defined rules and hierarchies. He’s a great choice for this.
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