We haven’t received much word on the adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic miniseries Red for some time now. Last we heard back in April, Morgan Freeman was joining the project, which already had Bruce Willis attached. Since then, Helen Mirren has signed on, and now we can add two more to the project—John C. Reilly, as a retired CIA agent paranoid about being assassinated,  and Mary Louise Parker, as the love interest to Willis’s character. Robert Schwentke, he of Flightplan and The Time Traveler’s Wife fame, is directing the film. Erich and Jon Hoeber (they of the recent crapfest Whiteout) wrote the screenplay.

The official description of the comic follows:

As a C.I.A. operative, Paul Moses’s unique talent for killing took him around the world, from one hotspot to another, carrying out the deadly orders of his superiors. And when he retired, he wanted to put his bloody past behind him. But when a new administration takes over the White House, the powers that be decide that Moses knows too much, forcing him back into the game against the agency that trained him.

The film will run with the concept of an older retired agent having to contend with a younger and more high tech group of assassins coming after him. I suppose it’s as if we get a Bourne sequel set twenty or so years in the future, except this one is directed by the guy who brought us The Time Traveler’s Wife. As someone who has no attachment to the comic series, I hope they manage to craft a decent spy film out of this admittedly cool idea.

Hopefully, this film will help me wash the taste of Surrogates out of my mouth (it just won’t come off!). We can also look forward to Bruce Willis in Kevin Smith’s upcoming A Couple of Dicks and The Expendables.

[Source: THR Heat Vision Blog]