Ed Brubaker’s Graphic Novel Adaptation ‘Coward’ to be Directed by Kim Jee-Woon

While A Tale of Two Sisters, I Saw the Devil, and A Bittersweet Life are all considered amazing achievements in Korean cinema, this year’s The Last Stand was a pretty sub-par American debut for director Kim Jee-Woon. It looks like Kim Jee-Woon is going to have another chance to break into the American market with Coward, an adaptation of a series of graphic novels penned by comics legend Ed Brubaker.

Coward is the first installment in the series Criminal, penned by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. It’s a self-contained story that follows Leo Patterson, a professional thief. After a risky job goes wrong, Patterson goes on the run from the both the cops and the criminals that he was working for.

With The Good, The Bad, The Weird, and to a lesser extend The Last Stand, Kim Jee-Woon isn’t a stranger to high-concept action movies, and when it comes to dark character-driven thrillers, he has proven himself with A Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil. Now, Kim Jee-Woon has an American script that comes from already acclaimed source material. In 2007, Ed Brubaker and illustrator Sean Phillips won the Eisner Award for Best New Series for Criminal, and Brubaker went on to pen the adaptation for the big screen.

David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) was originally slated to direct in 2011, but producers Jamie Patricof and Lynette Howell seem to be just as excited with Kim Jee-Woon at the wheel. Earlier today Patricof, told Variety, “Kim Jee-Woon is exactly the type of filmmaker with which we are looking to collaborate. His previous work consists of elevated genre films, set in interesting worlds, with three-dimensional characters, which makes him a very strong and exciting partner for Coward.”