The Losers Director Sylvain White Talks About His Potential Ronin Adaptation

In the early '80s, Frank Miller prefaced his groundbreaking work on The Dark Knight Returns with a limited series called Ronin, which saw a feudal Japanese samurai and his demon antagonist brought forward to a ravaged, lawless modern New York. The story has been potential fodder for a film adaptation a couple times over the past decade, most notably when Darren Aronofsky and New Line nearly teamed up to make a feature. Now Sylvain White, once set for for Castlevania and currently directing The Losers in Puerto Rico, has talked about his ideas for Ronin, which he is tapped to direct and envisions as "a very dark, futuristic, sci-fi film."

Collider spoke to White on the set of The Losers, where he described his interest in making Ronin as "a big-budget, big blockbuster" in 3D:

What's great and what for me works in the graphic novel, aesthetically-speaking, is the design of Aquarius...the design of New York. ...what's beautiful to me about "Ronin" is the production design and the character design and the colors that are used.

White says he'd have to make some changes, basically toeing the same "we're going to change some stuff, but we'll do it right" line that most take when tackling a popular graphic novel:

It's very difficult, and it's not linear, and it doesn't really fit into a film format off the bat. It's not a straight adaptation like '300' was or even 'Watchmen'. It's not as simple. Zack's going to kill me. [Laughs] But I think with 'Ronin' we need a little bit of streamlining, otherwise it's too esoteric. You need a little bit of streamlining, but the story and the characters, if I get to do that movie, will all be there.

Oddly, White also seems to get a dig in at Zack Snyder when he says "I don't think you make fans happy by just replicating frames. What they want to see is that you stayed true to the story, true to the characters and true to the design." But Ronin may or may not happen, especially now with the changes going on at WB and DC. White says a new draft was just turned in a week ago, and that he's hoping to make the film.