Posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2012 by Russ Fischer
Is Matthew Vaughn moving back away from four-color properties? Once Guy Ritchie’s producer, Vaughn debuted as a director with Layer Cake, pretty much out-Ritchie-ing his former filmmaking partner in the process, and then moved on to a group of comic-book based films: Stardust, Kick-Ass, and X-Men: First Class.
Vaughn is signed for another X-Men movie and is producing the Kick-Ass sequel, but he’s also developing other films. One is an adaptation of Lexicon, based on a novel that will be published next year from author Max Barry (Jennifer Government, Company and Machine Man). Vaughn optioned the novel and will script the film himself.
Deadline has the news on the option, and says Lexicon would be a contemporary story, even though it takes place in an alternate world.
Barry’s own website has a vague description of the book, as he says,
[Lexicon] is about a secret persuasion society that builds and deploys words as weapons. The people who wield these words are known as poets; the story centers around a young woman who is recruited into their ranks, and the man she falls in love with. Which you are not allowed to do, as a poet. I could explain why, but I’m not going to. Just trust me.
We don’t have much more info than that, and there’s no clue as to when this one might shoot, if ever. I’ll be curious to see if Vaughn tackles the screenplay entirely on his own over time. If so, and the film makes it to the screen, it would be his first solo screenplay effort.Cool Posts From Around the Web: