Sgt. Rock Preparing for Future War Movie

Published by Jeff Leins on: February 2nd, 2010

Producer Joel Silver is working on another comic book adaptation for Warner Bros/DC and is attempting a wholly new approach to finally bring Sgt. Rock to the screen.

After several failed attempts to adapt the 50-year-old army sergeant character, Rock may be moving out of the traditional World War II setting and into a new battle the world hasn’t even fought yet.  “As a war movie, it’s not going to be ‘where it’s been,’ it’s going to be ‘where it’s going,’” Silver explained to the Hero Complex. “We didn’t want to do Iraq, we didn’t want to do a contemporary war. We wanted to do a sort of futuristic war.”

How far into the future?  Silver hinted only “a little bit,” so I suppose we won’t see Rock chomping on an electric cigarette and lobbing laser grenades at encroaching robot armies, as awesome as that might sound. Until you realize they cast Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson due to easy name linkage and unwanted action hero status.  The question then becomes “why call it Sgt. Rock if he’s not fighting in WWII?”  Aside from brand recognition and lack of creativity, there doesn’t seem to be a particularly good reason.

Silver says Francis Lawrence is consulting on the project, which doesn’t have a green light yet.  Lawrence recently stepped up to advise on reshoots of Jonah Hex, so he’s not a lock for the director’s chair if this version happens.

Rock has been kicked around since the 80’s when Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to an Austrian take on the Easy Company commander.  The comic has cropped up a few times with various re-writes, but the most recent version had Guy Ritchie interested for a short stint.  Of course, Ritchie landed the job for Sherlock Holmes instead and hasn’t looked back as he prepares for the sequel.

As I pointed out last week, Silver has had bad luck with adapting comics and cartoons, including the now director-less PG-13 Lobo, a slow-moving He-Man, a seemingly dead Wonder Woman project, and a discarded Plastic Man from the Wachowskis.  Plus who can forget the Speed Racer flop of Summer 2008?