Guy Ritchie to shoot ‘Gamekeeper’

It appears that filmmaker Guy Ritchie has come full circle with his Virgin Comics series The Gamekeeper. News broke yesterday that Ritchie is planning to direct a feature-film adaptation of the graphic mini-series, with Joel Silver on board as producer.

The book, part of Virgin Comics “Director’s Cut” line – which also includes comics created by John Woo, Terry Gilliam, Nicholas Cage, and Ed Burns – is based on a concept created by Ritchie, but actually scripted by Andy Diggle, a comics scribe with an impressive resume that includes Hellblazer, Swamp Thing, and Batman.

The protagonist of the story is Brock, silent, stone-faced hunter who works as the gamekeeper on a remote estate in Scotland (a gamekeeper is someone hired to monitor game and keep away poachers). Haunted by an event in the past that is slowly revealed as the story progresses, Brock is forced out of hiding when a group of mercenaries raid his employer’s estate, and finds himself hunting a new form of animal: man.

The action shifts from the Scottish countryside to Amsterdam, as Brock investigates the motive for the assault, and it’s connection with the dark events of his own past.

Hopefully Ritchie will avoid the obvious pitfall of Gamekeeper descending into Scotland’s answer to Rambo. Though he seems to continue to fly under the radar these days, Ritchie more than proved himself as a filmmaker with incredible talent Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, even if his last two films fell flat. Ritchie’s signature use of the UK’s criminal underworld should pair well with the crime elements of the story, as should the stylistic use of violence he has employed in his previous work. I've been keeping up with the comic series, and it's a decent storyline with outstanding artwork.

As I said when I reported on the release of the Gamekeeper comic back in March, Ritchie's first wise decision would be to cast Daniel Craig in the role of Brock.

In the more immediate future for Ritchie, Rocknrolla (also a Warner Bros film).