The Cowboy Ninja Viking comic book movie adaptation has added two new writers ahead of a planned summer 2018 shooting start. The upcoming film is a passion project from Chris Pratt, who already has two major franchises to his name - with Jurassic World and Guardians of the Galaxy (three, if you count The Avengers) - but they aren’t enough for the actor. Now, Pratt wants to launch a new property based on the oddball Image Comics title Cowboy Ninja Viking.
Created by A.J. Lieberman and Riley Rossmo, Cowboy Ninja Viking revolves around a truly bizarre counter intelligence unit made up of agents with multiple personalities. Pratt will play a character named Duncan, who combines the traits of - naturally - a cowboy, a ninja and a Viking. The plot gets moving when a number of these agents, called Triplets, go rogue and Duncan has to take them out. Game of Thrones director Michelle MacLaren was hired to helm the film after John Wick filmmakers David Leitch and Chad Stahelski seemingly passed on the project.
With Craig Mazin (The Hangover II) and Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) both having already done a draft on the Cowboy Ninja Viking script, Universal has brought in two more writers to do another pass ahead of this summer’s filming start date. THR reports that Rampage scribe Ryan Engle and Wrath of the Titans writer Dan Mazeau will get the next crack at helping bring the script for Cowboy Ninja Viking to life.
THR says Universal met with multiple writers before settling on Engle and Mazeau. In a possibly revealing move, the studio asked the two writers to work together on a new draft and they agreed. Normally, studios don’t ask writers who’ve never worked together before to collaborate on script drafts in this manner. Could this be a sign of script trouble for the movie? With cameras set to roll in June, Universal certainly wants to have a finished script locked down. Of course, movies do occasionally go before cameras without a finished script, but such a circumstance qualifies as less than ideal.
Cowboy Ninja Viking certainly is not what anyone would call a hot IP, but Chris Pratt is a fan and he’s the reason the movie is happening. That Universal would get behind the film shows what a great relationship Pratt has with the studio after the wild success of Jurassic World. Pratt and Universal hope the success story continues when Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom hits theaters this summer. Meanwhile, Pratt hopes Cowboy Ninja Viking has a script he and Michelle MacLaren can work with when the movie rolls cameras next month.
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Source: THR
