Back in April we learned that 20th Century Fox had acquired the film rights to the graphic novel series
Incognito from acclaimed writer Ed Brubaker. Pulitzer prize winner Robert Schenkkan is handling screenplay responsibilities for the film adaptation.
Here is a brief Incognito synopsis from DEADLINE for those not familiar with the series.
The protagonist is Zack Overkill, a ruthless villain who is powered by super strength. He is caught and rats out his boss, The Black Death. He goes into witness protection. He’s given a drug to dull his powers and takes a normal guy job as delivering the mail. By the time he discovers that messing with certain drugs restores his power, he has developed something of a conscience. He becomes a vigilante and soon, his exploits become known to The Black Death, who is out for revenge.
Brubaker describes Zack Overkill...
“He’s not your typical villain and I was trying to blend the trappings of pulp, comic and noir genres. Zack was raised to be his world’s equivalent of a supervillain. We’ve all seen the story of a good person who goes undercover and gets corrupted. This is a bad person forced to live among regular people, and how he’s affected by that. He once ran around with a mask, but now he’s got the fake name and the fake job. My goal was to have you rooting for him as he grows a conscience.”
Recently MTV had the opportunity to speak with Brubaker about the series follow up
Incognito: Bad Influences. See what Brubaker had to say about the status of the film adaptation below.
Well, you also have yet another version of "Incognito" on the way: the live-action movie. What's the latest on the film?
It's full-steam ahead so far. We're expecting a draft in the next couple of weeks. Robert just went off on a research trip to scout some locations for the big finale.
It's interesting because Robert is a friend of mine and I helped attach him to the project and everything, and he won an Emmy a month or so ago for being a producer on "The Pacific," so that was nice. He was up for two Emmys for episodes he wrote of "The Pacific."
It must be nice to say you have an award-winning screenwriter on the adaptation...
Yeah, it's good timing. He said after they had their big beat-by-beat meeting that he'd never had a studio that wanted to be more faithful to the source material, so I was pleasantly surprised to hear that. I was expecting for it go the other direction, because you never know what you'll get. So far, everybody involved in the production is really excited about it and into the source material.
So have you seen any of the draft yet?
He's got a draft he's revising now, but he's not willing to show it to me yet. Luckily, he travels a lot or I would be stealing his laptop to read it.
Was there ever a time when you considered writing the screenplay yourself? Between all your comics work and "Angel Of Death" and such, you certainly have experience in both worlds...
I've done screenwriting, I did a pilot for Fox in December and January, and I've had lots of experience in that world, but not nearly as much as I've had in comics so far. When you start moving into a new industry or trying to learn new industries, you really want to watch a seasoned pro to know how to do it. With the amount of interest we had in "Incognito" as a property, I didn't want my first studio job to be adapting one of my own books and possibly getting the life beat out of me by studio notes. At the time, I didn't know the people interested in it would be so enthusiastic about it. But I've also seen movies Robert had written and read screenplays by him, and he's someone who's been working steadily for a couple decades in Hollywood now, and I thought I could learn a lot from watching how he would do something like this.
Also, I had already written it once, and I didn't necessarily feel the need to do it again.
So here's the question I have to ask everyone: what's your dream casting for the film? Is there someone you had in mind when you were writing Zack Overkill or any of the other characters?
It's weird because I've done that here and there with "Criminal" characters. In my mind, when I was creating Tracy Lawless, I thought, "This would be such a great role for Brad Pitt to do." And the minute I started working on it I saw that Brad Pitt had optioned "The Killer," damn it! [Laughs] I didn't do it on this one so much, though. Everyone suggests Leonardo DiCaprio for everything. My wife thinks Chris Pine would be perfect for Zack Overkill, but no, I haven't really thought about it.
Hawksblueyes:I have still not had the opportunity to check this series out but I am a big fan of Brubakers work. This looks like it could turn out to be an interesting movie. To read the entire interview click on the link below.