Darren Aronofsky To Direct Machine Man

But not the Marvel Comics’ Machine Man…

Darren Aronofsky is to direct Machine Man , reveals Variety . But, no, he’s not going to hop from one Marvel superhero film ( Wolverine 2 ) to another. This is a different Machine Man .

Rather than Marvel’s answer to Inspector Gadget, the film will be based on a story written by Max Berry which originally appeared on his website in serial form, with a single page published each day. You can read in its entirity here (and it has got one of those first pages that makes you want to read on). The story concerns an engineer who, when he loses a leg, starts replacing parts of his body with titanium upgrades of his own design. He then discovers that he isn't the only one with plans for his new body. Mark Heyman (who co-wrote Aronofsky’s Black Swan with John McLaughlin) will adapt the story.

Berry himself is wonderfull pragmatic about the project on his site: “I have discovered that there’s a lot that can derail a project between sign-on and starlets. Most of the time, the movie never happens. So when the Machine Man deal happened, I tried to steel myself. ‘Meh,’ I told people. ‘Not as glamorous as it sounds. Probably never go anywhere.’ A few months ago, I heard Darren Aronofsky was interested in directing. ‘Yeah, there’s always a big name who’s interested,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s always interested.’ Then he signed on. And today it’s public.

“Now, Aronofsky is possibly the greatest director in the world. By which I mean, if you wrote a book or a screenplay, and you wanted someone to make it into a film, you would choose him. Because many people can do smart and unsettling and entertaining, but not usually all at once.

“It is getting harder to stay cool about this.

“By the way, Aronofsky was involved with the RoboCop remake before the studio imploded. So do you think he walked away with a head full of unrealised ideas about bioaugmentation or what?”

We like this guy.

Presumably Machine Man will go into production after Wolverine 2 .