Summit Entertainment has optioned Red, a three-issue comic book series written by Warren Ellis, illustrated by Cully Hamner, and published by Wildstorm/DC.  This marks the first time that a comic book series from the DC Comics stable has been optioned by a studio outside of DC’s parent company Time Warner.

Brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber, who adapted Greg Rucka’s Whiteout for the big screen, are writing the screenplay based on Ellis’ Red, a white-knuckles thriller about a retired black-ops CIA agent who suddenly finds himself the target of an assassination team.  The Hoeber’s adaptation reportedly concentrates more on the age and technology gap faced by the retired agent who has to contend with younger, fitter assassins equipped with high tech gear.

Transformer’s producer Lorenzo Di Bonaventura is producing Red along with DC Comics Senior VP of Creative Affairs Gregory Noveck.  According to The Hollywood Reporter it took “almost two years of wrangling to extricate the book from the Warners fold,” but with Warners recently announcing a 50% cut in the number of films it plans to produce in 2009, this property evidently became available.