As James Wan enjoys success with his film Conjuring 2 topping the box office prepares himself to dive into the DC Comic Universe with his direction of Aquaman, there is also another project that he is working on, which is gaining steam in its development. He is producing a film titled Malignant Man, which is an adaptation of a Boom! Studios comic, which he himself co-created. Not bad for a man with a busy schedule directing big name films. And the project has one also landed a director with San Andreas’ Brad Peyton set to step into the director’s chair for the planned film.
It’s an interesting move from Wan to hand over a big passion project of his to another director, but with his schedule it will probably be difficult to fit the film in and handing it over to a director he feels can still produce the same vision is probably a better idea and hopefully a good sign that he really trusts and believes that Peyton is the right person for the job.
Written by Wan alongside Michael Alan Nelson and illustrated by Piotr Kowalski, the Malignant Man comic follows Alan Gates, a man suffering from terminal cancer. Or at least that’s the premise it starts out with. It turns out that his tumor is actually a mysterious alien parasite which has given him some incredible powers, but also a renewed purpose, and a second lease on life once he figures it all out. The story has Gates battle a secret evil army buried under society’s skin, while simultaneously wrestling with his own forgotten past.
The film will be based on a screenplay written by Zak Olkewicz and will see Peyton and Wan will produce the project alongside Boom!’s Ross Richie and Stephen Christy. Malignant Man will be released and distributed by 20th Century Fox. There is no set release date for it as of yet. Wan has had a golden touch of late with everything he touches and hopefully this continues that trend of great films.
Peyton also has the horror film Incarnate coming out later this year, and he’s just wrapped the pilot for the Discovery Channel series Frontier, which happens to star Jason Mamoa, the lead star of Wan’s Aquaman. The world of film making is a small one after all.
Last Updated: June 14, 2016
