Lionsgate has announced that they've landed the worldwide motion picture rights to Gerard de Villiers’ best-selling action-spy series “S.A.S.”, which has sold more than 120 million copies worldwide. As part of their grand plan to adapt the acclaimed property, Lionsgate has set Academy Award nominated actor Michael Fassbender as the star of MALKO, the first of what's hoped to be a series of films hailing from de Villiers’ material. In addition to playing super spy for hire Malko Linge, Fassbender will also produce via his DMC Film production banner, with Academy Award nominated screenwriter Eric Warren Singer (AMERICAN HUSTLE, ONLY THE BRAVE) penning the screenplay.
As part of the deal with Liongate, the studio has also secured rights to de Villier’s action-packed library of best selling espionage thrillers, detailed across 200 books that have been translated into multiple languages and sold throughout the world. As per today's Lionsgate press release: The S.A.S. franchise follows the singular hero, Malko Linge, an Austrian nobleman and freelance CIA operative who spent his formative years in a special Nazi work camp for captured spies. Malko learned the intricate dark arts of tradecraft from the best. Now, an adult living in a reclaimed family manor fallen into disrepair, Malko becomes a spy for hire. He is the ultimate agent without an agency – a gentleman warrior without a country who works according to his own moral code and lives the only way a man who has grown up in the face of death can: with a wicked wit and a lust for all things in life, even the things that might kill him.
When development on MALKO gets underway, the action-packed adaptation fronted by Fassbender will be based on de Villier’s book “Checkpoint Charlie.”
“We are enormously excited to be teaming with Greg Shapiro and Michael Fassbender as well as Lars Sylvest from Black Magic and Thorsten Schumacher from Rocket Science to develop Malko,” said Joe Drake, Chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “This is a character with a tremendous 200 title library of amazing spy stories to draw from and we believe we have a world-class creative team in place with Michael and Eric Warren Singer as we move forward on this project.”
Producing MALKO alongside Fassbender are Black Magic’s Lars Sylvest, Kingsgate Films’ Greg Shapiro and Rocket Science’s Thorsten Schumacher. Meanwhile, Singer, Jason Clark, and DMC’s Conor McCaughan will executive produce.
Could MALKO and Gerard de Villiers’ other S.A.S. properties become the next big thing in spy thriller cinema? Should characters the likes of James Bond and Ethan Hunt be concerned about there being some new competition in their midst?
Up next for Fassbender is David Sandberg's big screen version of KUNG FURY, which is expected to go into production later this year.