We sometimes rag on comic book movies here at The Playlist, partly because so much of the medium’s output is so relentlessly juvenile (Mark Millar, we’re looking at you). But there are plenty of comic creators who are putting out consistently excellent work, and foremost among them at the moment is Brian K. Vaughan.
Best known as the creator of the long-running series “Y: The Last Man,” which had D.J. Caruso and Shia LaBoeuf attached for a while, although it seems to have stalled since, the writer’s work on the likes of Marvel’s “Runaways” and the political superhero drama “Ex Machina” (which someone really should turn into an HBO series) is fiercely original and intelligent. The writer moved into screenwriting a few years ago, serving as a writer and producer on “Lost,” and selling a script entitled “Roundtable” to Dreamworks a few years back. The latter, a deeply satisfying fantasy comedy in the vein of “Ghostbusters,” is about modern day British knights, (including Sir Michael Caine) being brought together by Merlin to battle a mystical threat, and is one of our favorite unproduced scripts of the last few years.
That project’s still in development, although there’s been no news for a while, but Vaughn’s agency is currently shopping a new spec script around town. “The Vault” is based on the real life Doomsday Vault in Norway, which is built into a frozen mountainside, and is designed to store seeds of every type of crop in existence, in case of global catastrophe. It is, apparently, the most secure building of its type in the world; “fenced in and guarded, with steel airlock doors, motion detectors and polar bears roaming outside.” As such, it seems perfectly designed to be the center for a heist film, which is exactly what Vaughan has written.
Described as “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “2012”/”Children of Men,” it’s set after a devastating, apocalyptic plague, and follows “the world’s greatest thief [who] must break into the extremist-controlled Doomsday Vault to steal the one seed that could prevent the extinction of the human race.” It sounds high concept, sure, but Vaughan’s previous work has shown that you don’t necessarily have to sacrifice brains for a good logline, and we’d be very surprised if it isn’t snapped up immediately.