LOBO movie back in development with Wonder Woman writer!

The Main Man is back, ya fragging bastiches! Well, at lease we hope he’s back, because when it comes to the feature film adaptation of popular comic book Lobo, I’m not holding my breath here. Created in the 1980’s by Roger Slifer and Keith Giffen as an edgy alien bounty hunter, Lobo really gained immense popularity in the 1990’s when he was revived as a violent, foul-mouthed, beer swilling, near-immortal anti-hero who could – and regularly did – go toe to toe with the likes of Superman. Lobo was all the extreme tendencies of 90’s comic books personified and fans just loved him.

So of course Hollywood came a-knocking, but unfortunately a feature film adaptation has been stuck in developmental hell with plenty of false starts since then. The last attempt saw Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson being rumoured for the role, while his San Andreas director Brad Peyton was attached to write and direct. That was back in 2012 though, and we’ve barely heard anything since, except for Danny Trejo petitioning to play the role.

But now The Wrap brings word that Warner Bros is once again looking to bring Lobo to the silver screen, and have tapped Jason Fuchs as writer. If Fuchs’ name sounds familiar, it’s because he also wrote WB’s upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Clearly WB was impressed with Fuchs’ work on that superhero movie and want to see him tackle another. It’s being reported that Fuchs will be tossing out all the previous iterations of the Lobo script and will be starting from scratch with his own ideas.

There’s no word yet though on whether this version of Lobo would be slotting into WB’s current DC Comics Cinematic Universe lineup, but you would have to think that that would be the case, especially with WB keeping the writing in-house so to speak. We also have not heard of any actors or directors attached to the movie, and with The Rock now already being tapped to play anti-hero Black Adam in an upcoming Shazam movie for WB, the role of Lobo is quite open.

It’s at this point that I have to just point out two things: Firstly, one of the biggest hurdles this production faced for years was how to bring such an extreme, unfiltered R-Rated character (he brutally massacred his entire planet as a high school science project) to the screen without alienating Joe Q. Public. You just have to think that the insane success of equally unhinged Deadpool has perhaps made WB realize that maybe they don’t have to tone Lobo down for the wider audience after all.

Secondly, if WB are looking to adapt the new supremely lame, totally devoid of fun and irony, utterly attitude-less version of Lobo that’s currently traipsing around the DC Comics universe, instead of the classic grungy and ONE TRUE LOBO, then I may just have to start concocting my own high school science project to use on the WB lot.

Last Updated: March 18, 2016