THE DARKNESS Movie Is First Big Screen Comic Con Announcement!

This year's addition of the San Diego Comic Con is kicking into a higher gear and even though it's only Wednesday morning, the first big screen announcement has already come through on the wire! The L.A. Times are reporting that the Walt Disney-affiliated Mandeville Films (The Fighter, The Muppets!) are looking to adapt the Top Cow comic book The Darkness into a live-action film. Created by Marc Silvestri, Garth Ennis and David Wohl in 1996, the supernatural crime comic tells the story of Jackie Estacado, a Mafia hit man who holds the ancient power of 'The Darkness' which allows him to call upon demons from other realms to do his bidding, of which is always good intentioned. Despite selling more than 25 million copies around the world over 115 issues, The Darkness is still probably more well known for it's uber popular video game that came out a few years back. Incidentally, news has just emerged that it's video gaming sequel, The Darkness 2, has just been pushed back from it's late 2011 release to February 7th, 2012. We had a big hands-on preview of the game earlier this month. The Darkness certainly could be made into a good live-action film but will the desire to hit a mainstream audience mean Mandeville don't aim for as faithful an adaptation as they could? The property is particularly dark and violent, indeed, Dimension Films spent six-figures in trying to bring The Darkness to the big screen in 2004 as a blockbuster film before realising this isn't a mass mainsteam product. Let's hope the idea isn't to water down The Darkness....