The movie version of the best-selling Tokyopop manhwa title, Hyung Min-Woo’s Priest, possibly the darkest, bloodiest story ever pencilled by a Korean comic book artist, will finally see the light of day... very shortly. Sony’s Screen Gems will take care of the distribution, while production will be placed in the adept hands of ex-horror master Sam Raimi (director of the three Spiderman), and his company, Ghost House Pictures (he produced Shimizu Takashi’ remakes of his own Grudges movies). The movie is set to start shooting on October 1st under the direction of Andrew Douglas (Amytiville Horror, the 2004 version of the classic horror film).

The series follows the tragic steps of Ivan Isaacs, a priest who traded half his soul to the devil Belial, in exchange for the power to come back from the dead and wreak his vengeance on the mad angel that caused the death of his beloved. The fallen scholar-ecclesiastic becomes an enraged killing machine and starts waging an unholy war on a legion of demons and other damned flesh-eating creatures in an imaginary Wild West that looks literally like hell, or perhaps, like one of the six Buddhist worlds: the realm of the ashura, where permanent war is the natural state of things. An elaborate epic, full of sound and fury, with abundant and complex theological twists and turns, this manhwa is certainly not the story of the genre that lends itself the best to an adaptation for the silver screen, but visually, it was practically begging for Hollywood to exploit (butcher?) it, and it is the first South Korean series to be licensed for a major feature film.

The script, penned by a newcomer, Cory Goodman, describes the adaptation as a “vampire western” that tells the story of “a warrior priest who disobeys church law by teaming with a young sheriff and a priestess to track down a band of renegade vampires who have kidnapped his niece.” Which already sounds a little worrying (and quite far from the original material), but why not? Wait and see…

Rumor has it that Gerald Butler (King Leonidas in Spaaaarta!, oops... 300) could be cast as the main character.

The manhwa is worth the read, but is not for the squeamish: