Having made his feature directorial debut on the underrated 2014 crime thriller Son of a Gun starring Ewan McGregor, Brenton Thwaites and Alicia Vikander, Julius Avery has since been establishing himself as the go-to guy for high concept genre pieces.
Bad Robot’s World War II monster mash Overlord was an impressive calling card, and while we’ll be waiting until next summer to see how Sylvester Stallone’s gritty superhero thriller Samaritan turns out, the filmmaker is also attached to reboot Van Helsing for Universal under the watchful eye of producer James Wan.
On top of that, Deadline reports that Avery has signed on to direct manga adaptation Gantz for Sony. Based on the series written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku, Arrowverse co-creator Marc Guggenheim is set to pen the script, although there’s no word on a start date for production as of yet.
Gantz tells the story of Kei Kurono and Masuro Kato, who both die in a train accident and become part of a game in which they’re forced to hunt down and kill aliens alongside other recently deceased folks. It sounds suitably bonkers, so you can understand why Sony are said to be so high on an IP that’s virtually guaranteed to deliver something weird, wild and wonderful.
