“The Terrence Malick Film That Sparked a Keanu Reeves Tale”
In addition to being an A-list star with serious longevity and one of the modern era’s most notable action heroes, Keanu Reeves has dabbled in other artistic pursuits away from the confines of the silver screen.
He’s directed precisely one movie and even took on a rare villainous turn in Man of Tai Chi, an old-fashioned martial arts flick that paid loving tribute to a genre Reeves has always been a huge fan of.
Since then, though, he hasn’t shown an inkling to step behind the camera again.
Comic books are another lifelong obsession for the John Wick figurehead, which eventually parlayed into BRZRKR.
Grammatical offence aside, Reeves co-created and wrote the initial 12-issue series, which follows an immortal warrior called Berzerker as the half-man and half-god battles through millennia of conflict.
Having such a major name attached in a creative capacity set alarm bells ringing around Hollywood, with Netflix wasting little time swooping in and acquiring BRZRKR.
The streaming service has big plans for the property, too, with a live-action movie starring Reeves in the lead role being announced alongside an anime-inspired episodic series that’s been promised a two-season order.
Project Power and The Batman writer Mattson Tomlin is on scripting duties for the feature.
Still, despite boasting such an outlandish and fantastical concept, the scribe and Mother/Android director revealed that its influences are a lot more existential than one might think, considering the far-fetched concept.
Tomlin revealed at San Diego Comic-Con that Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life and Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain had been important touchstones during the drafting process, raising the thematic question of how to handle a protagonist incapable of death.
Not the most obvious comparisons, especially when Reeves was happy to talk up the graphic violence.
“I wanted a character to punch people through their chest and rip their arms off,” he told the Comic-Con crowd.
“And the idea of someone who was cursed with violence and trying to figure out who they are and how they came to be and kind of reclaiming their humanity.”
Suffice it to say, dismemberment and fisticuffs rupturing a chest cavity aren’t hallmarks of Malick’s elegiac filmography, which only serves to make Reeves’ ideas for bringing BRZRKR into live-action all the more fascinating.
Reeves did admit in an interview with Collider that he was considering the idea of directing the live-action film, although he put his chances at a far-from-guaranteed “33%”.
As of yet, the project still doesn’t have a director, and with John Wick seemingly on ice for the time being at the same time the actor’s schedule is looking clearer than it has for a long time, the opportunity remains there for the taking should he decide he’s the right person for the job.
