Five films based on Valiant Entertainment characters will be released by Sony Pictures under a deal announced by Valiant and Sony today.  The series will alternate Bloodshot and Harbinger films and culminate in a film based on Valiant’s Harbinger Wars 2013 crossover event.  The first film in the series will be Bloodshot, planned for release in 2017.

Valiant CEO Dinesh Shamdasani told ICv2 that the budgets for the Valiant films would be in the $100 million range (see “ICv2 Interview:  Valiant CEO and COO”). 

The films will be produced by Neal H. Moritz and Toby Jaffe from Original Film (Fast and Furious, Jump Street, Green Hornet, I Am Legend, XXX) and Valiant CEO Dinesh Shamdasani.  Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman:  The Secret Service, Kick-Ass) and Valiant’s Jason Kothari will exec produce. 

Bloodshot will be directed by David Leitch & Chad Stahelski (John Wick, which had an 85 Rotten Tomatoes score), from a script by Jeff Wadlow (Kick Ass 2) and Eric Heisserer (A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Thing).

Heisserer also wrote the script for Harbinger, for which no director has been announced.

Bloodshot has been in development at Sony for some time (see “Here Comes the ‘Bloodshot’ Movie”); Valiant took back the rights to Harbinger in 2013, after the project languished at Paramount (see “Valiant Takes ‘Harbinger’ Movie In-House”).

Valiant took a big step forward in the media licensing arena with the commitment by DMG Entertainment of a minimum of $100 million toward film and TV production (see “Valiant Gets Major Investment”).

Other films in development by Sony include Archer & Armstrong, being developed by the Sean Daniel Company with a BenDavid Grabinski script (see "'Archer & Armstrong' Movie"); Shadowman, also in development by Sean Daniel, with a script by J. Michael Straczynski (see "JMS to Adapt Valiant's 'Shadowman'"), and X-O Manowar, which Shamdasani teased in today’s interview (see “ICv2 Interview:  Valiant CEO and COO”).