Fox signs to bring Incognito crook to the screen

[HMG] – Superheroes have been box office gold – Superman, Spider Man, Batman, et al… But they’re all good guys. Now Fox are bringing us a new twist on hero — A bad guy gone sort of good.

The studio has just bought the rights to ‘Incognito,’ a 1996-vintage series of graphic novels by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Here we meet Zack Overkill, a bad-guy with almost no feelings and even less morals, who is caught by the Feds and quickly sells out his boss, ‘The Black Death’ to protect his own skin.

Zack is then placed in the Witness Protection Program and given a drug that cancels his powers. His new life then sees him working as the mail boy in an office. But he later discovers other drugs which restore his abilities and soon vows revenge on his boss.

“He’s not your typical villain,” Brubaker tells Deadline. “Zack was raised to be his world’s equivalent of a supervillain. Now he’s a bad person forced to live among regular people. My goal was to have you rooting for him as he grows a conscience.”

For the comic-book fans, Ed is also the guy who killed-off Captain America. And one of his other comic novels, ‘Sleeper’ is now being studied by Warner’s as a possible fit for Tom Cruise.

Robert Schenkkan, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who also wrote HBO’s ‘The Pacific’ will be converting the story, but cast and director are still up in the air. When decisions are made we’ll make sure you know…