Hot on the heels of this weekend’s John Wick, Constantin Film and Dark Horse Entertainment are bringing their own high-intensity action-thriller Polar to the screen, with a master assassin named Black Kaiser at the center of the story.
Not unlike Keanu Reeves’ Wick, Kaiser is targeted by a crew of hitmen and forced out of retirement, only Kaiser finds his gun-blazing and bloody universe at odds with the doting and protective relationship he has with the child of one of his former marks. This dynamic of dangerous killer with a kid has been played out many times before, as in the long-running Japanese manga/film series “Lone Wolf & Cub,” Luc Besson’s The Professional or the Clive Owen starrer Shoot ‘Em Up.
Based on the Dark Horse Comics graphic novel “Polar: Came from the Cold” by Victor Santos, the screenplay for Polar was apparently written on spec by Jayson Rothwell (Silent Night), which stirred Constantin to purchase it. Rothwell is also writing an Untitled Heist Thriller for Thunder Road, the company behind Wick. Starting to see a pattern?
Constantin is currently out to directors with the aim of shooting Polar in the spring of 2015, with Robert Kulzer producing along with Jeremy Bolt (Resident Evil) as well as Dark Horse’s Mike Richardson and Keith Goldberg. Dark Horse currently has 2016’s big-budget Tarzan on tap, as well as the long-gestating animated film of Eric Powell’s The Goon from producer David Fincher.
For all the fans of the “Polar” comic, who would make a perfect onscreen Black Kaiser?
