Warner Bros. has picked up a pitch for an action comedy titled Killshot, though beyond the fact that it’s from Ken Woodruff, there’s very little else THR has to say about it. Plot details? Being kept under wraps. Major producers? None that we can speak of at the moment.
We don’t even know a lot about Woodruff, who’s best recognized as an executive story editor and co-producer on CBS’ weekly drama The Mentalist, with Simon Baker. Before that, he was assistant to the director on FOX’s soap opera The O.C.. Now? He’s a paid screenwriter with an action-comedy project in the pipeline.
It’s unlikely that Woodruff is reworking Elmore Leonard’s 1989 novel about a married couple dodging a pair of hitmen. But I guess it’s possible. Director John Madden (The Debt, Shakespeare In Love) attempted an adaptation back in 2008, with Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Thomas Jane and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in his cast. Given Hollywood’s penchant for remaking anything under the sun, I still suppose it’s possible, though I’m guessing it’s unlikely.
So instead, we probably have a new franchise on the horizon from the studio that backed the Lethal Weapon series and took a gamble on Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Will Woodruff – who also sold a feature script called Goodbye Mexico that sold to Richard Saperstein's Genre Company -- bring as original and provocative a voice to the action-comedy genre? We can only hope.
