Today's Hollywood Reporter reveals Casey Silver Prods. has dipped into its discretionary fund to option the Brian Haberlin-created comic book series Area 52 and has tapped screenwriters Damian Shannon and Mark Swift to adapt.
Sources said the option deal is six figures against seven figures, which includes bonuses.
Area 52, a four-issue series published in 2001, is about a top-secret warehouse in Antarctica known as Area 52, used by the government as a storage dump for otherworldly discoveries after it has probed, poked, prodded and cataloged them.
The base is staffed by a ragtag group of misfits who have nothing to do until a mislabeled storage box from the 1947 Roswell crash turns out not to be the spent fuel pod as cataloged all those years ago. When it hatches and gives rise to an alien killing machine, the base staff, driven by fear and stupidity, band together to save themselves and the world.
Casey Silver is producing the project, with Haberlin executive producing. Casey Silver's production vp Paul Brehme is overseeing.
Shannon and Swift are repped by the Broder Kurland Webb Uffner Agency, Zide-Perry Entertainment and Colden McKuin Frankel. They most recently made a deal to adapt the video game "State of Emergency" at New Line Cinema after having written the studio's "Freddy vs. Jason."
Haberlin, repped by Jim Strader of AniManagement, co-created the comic book title Witchblade, which is now a TNT series. Haberlin also created such comics as Aria, Stone, The Wicked, Jinn and Hellcop among others.
