‘Area 52′ Comic Heading For the Big Screen

One of the interesting side effects of superheroes dominating the box office is the number of smaller, indie comic books being targeted for adaptation. The results have been varied: 'A History of Violence,' 'Red,' 'Road to Perdition' and 'Whiteout' were all comics before they were movies (although most of the paying public wouldn't know it). The next comic to join this line-up is the 2001 miniseries 'Area 52.'

Created by Brian Haberlin, 'Area 52' has been bouncing around Hollywood for some time now, but it's now landed in the laps of producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Mark Vahradian, who transformed 'Red' into a sleeper hit two years ago. Johnny Rosenthal, who is currently scripting 'Bad Santa 2,' has been given screenwriting duties.

The Hollywood Reporter describes the project thusly:

"The story follows a group of misfit soldiers stationed at a remote military base in Antarctica known as Area 52 that guard a storage facility in which top-secret, other-worldly technologies and weapons are kept and analyzed. A murderous alien, hatched from an artifact, stalks the soldiers, who must defeat it."

If any of the films mentioned in this article are any indication, the film of 'Area 52' will bear little resemblance to its comic counterpart, with the creative team using the basic premise as a launching point. However, when your basic premise is essentially 'Warehouse 13' meets 'The Thing,' you have remarkably little to screw up. That sounds like one helluva movie.