Luca Guadagnino’s DC Movie ‘Sgt. Rock’ Scrapped | Exclusive

Well, there’s one less soldier on the DC Studios battlefield.

“Sgt. Rock,” to be directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by his “Challengers” and “Queer” collaborator Justin Kuritzkes, is no longer moving forward at DC Studios, TheWrap has exclusively learned. Colin Farrell, already a part of the DC Comics universe thanks to his role as The Penguin in Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” and the HBO spinoff series “The Penguin,” was in talks to play the title character after Daniel Craig dropped out.

The issue, one insider noted, came down to scheduling. The film, which would require a lot of exterior shoots, needed to start production this summer and wasn’t going to make its date. Budget didn’t appear to be an issue — it was meant to come in under $70 million, which for a high-priority comic book adaptation, is a bargain.

DC Studios had no comment.

The character, a gruff World War II combat soldier, first appeared in “Our Army at War” issue 83, back in June 1959. The character was created by Robert Kanigher and Joe Kubert. A crack shot with a strong will and even stronger convictions, he leads the Easy Company team of soldiers.

A big screen adaptation of the character has been in the works since the late 1980s, when Arnold Schwarzenegger was attached to play the character for super producer Joel Silver. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of Hollywood’s biggest writers contributed scripts for the Silver project, including David Peoples, Steven E. de Souza, John Milius and future Oscar winner Brian Helgeland. In the 2000s, the project was still being chipped away at, with Bruce Willis potentially playing the character for director Guy Ritchie. When Ritchie got pulled into the “Sherlock Holmes” movies for Silver, the project was on the backburner. By 2009 “Constantine” director Francis Lawrence had taken over the project but there had been little movement until now.

The character has also appeared, briefly, in the new DC Universe, overseen by James Gunn and Peter Safran. He pops up in a flashback in an episode of the adult animated series “Creature Commandos,” voiced by Maury Sterling. And it seems like that’s all we’ll see of the character, at least for the foreseeable future.

Guadagnino’s dance card is still full. He’s got “After the Hunt,” starring Julia Roberts, on the way later this year from Amazon MGM and has a number of projects in the works, including a new adaptation of “American Psycho” for Lionsgate, an adaptation of Pier Vittorio Tondelli’s 1989 novel “Separate Rooms” with his “Challengers” star Josh O’Connor, and a new adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel “Lord of the Flies” for Warner Bros. And Farrell is expected to return as the Penguin in Reeves’ “The Batman: Part II.”

As for DC Studios, the new universe of films launches on the big screen with this summer’s “Superman,” written and directed by James Gunn. That will be followed by “Supergirl,” starring Milly Alcock, and “Clayface,” a lower-budgeted character piece written by Mike Flanagan, in 2026.

“Supergirl” recently wrapped production and “Clayface” is due to start filming in October with “Speak No Evil” filmmaker James Watkins directing.

The post Luca Guadagnino’s DC Movie ‘Sgt. Rock’ Scrapped | Exclusive appeared first on TheWrap.