Black To Adapt THE EXECUTIONER

The Executioner sounds like a straight-to-video movie from Cannon that would have come out in the wake of The Terminator. Turns out it was a Sam Wanamaker movie from 1970 starring George Peppard. There is, however, another The Executioner.

The Executioner was a monthly men’s action-adventure paperback book series that was published from 1969-2020. Created and initially written by American author Don Pendleton, it followed Mack Bolan and his wars against organized crime and international terrorism. The series has sold more than 200 million copies since its 1969 debut installment, War Against the Mafia.

Now, legendary Lethal Weapon and The Last Boy Scout writer, director of The Nice Guys, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Iron Man 3, Shane Black is to adapt the book series into a feature at Sony Pictures.

Black will write the film and is considering directing. He will co-write with frequent collaborators Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry.

Mack Bolan was a Vietnam veteran, highly adept at penetration and intelligence gathering, guerrilla warfare, a sniper, and a skilled armorer. A series of events led to him turning his skills against everyone from the Mafia to the KGB, terrorists, and cyber-criminals, and more.

It sounds like they should have left him alone.

Joel Silver, Don Murphy, and Susan Montford will produce after unraveling the complicated screen rights to the property. Over the years many have tried to adapt it.

Joseph E. Levine contracted Richard Maibaum in 1972 to write a screenplay, based on the fifth and sixth volumes, Continental Contract and Assault on Soho. Some Pinnacle printings at the time had a strapline in a corner of the cover with “Soon to be a major motion picture from Avco-Embassy.”

At various stages, Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds were attached.

A later attempt to adapt The Executioner to the screen by William Friedkin was to star Sylvester Stallone and Cynthia Rothrock, but the project was scrapped.

In August 2014, producer and writer Shane Salerno acquired the rights to turn the novel series into a film franchise for Warner Bros., and with Bradley Cooper wanted for the Bolan role.

After 20 years of creeping feminisation, it looks like unashamedly testosterone-fuelled action is back!

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