“Cowboy Ninja Viking” may just take the cake. Deadline reports that “Zombieland” scribes, Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese will be adapting a graphic novel by AJ Lieberman and artist Riley Rossmo, published last year by Image Comics, which centers on an assassin who apparently unifies the varied skills of the cowboy, the ninja and the viking to create some sort of bizarre, ass-kicking symmetry.

Disney acquired the rights to the story after what must have been a heck of a pitch.   And Mark Gordon, Management 360 and Wernick & Reese will produce.

The film will tell the story of a multiple personality disorder patient who is trained in the assassin arts with three wildly different skill sets (and their accompanying personalities) and then tries to bring down the evil organization that created him.

Wernick & Rheese also wrote the upcoming “X-Men” spinoff, “Deadpool,” which is currently making the rounds to directors

“BREAKING NEWS: SPIDER-MAN GETS HIS GIRL: EMMA STONE TO PLAY FEMALE LEAD. Stone to Play Gwen Stacy Opposite Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker”

What was a surprise however is that last sentence. It was hardly considered that Stone would play anyone other than Parker’s most famous squeeze, Mary Jane Watson. Instead, she’ll be playing the blonde bombshell, Gwen Stacy.

This unexpected announcement solidifies the studio’s intentions to take an entirely different route in retelling an American classic.

Granted, the clash between the hype-driven mainstream and the critical establishment may never reconcile, but every now and then a film like “Zombieland” comes along and heartily endorses the crotchety old film critic’s argument that a movie can be both fun and smart.

Directed by newcomer, Ruben Fleischer, “Zombieland” takes the tired old zombie apocalypse exercise where a couple of unrelated savvy survivors discover one another and learn to get along in a new blood-soaked world — that eventually turns out to be not so terrible — and somehow makes it watchable.  Sam Raimi’s groundbreaking 1981 horror institution, “The Evil Dead,” proved that comedy and horror could coexist, and Edgar Wright’s 2004 innovation, “Shaun of the Dead,” sold that paradox to the mainstream with a brilliantly fused marriage of decaying zombie grotesquery and gleefully cheeky Brit-humor.  “Zombieland” is certainly no “The Evil Dead” or “Shaun of the Dead,” but manages to capture the spirit of those films, albeit in typical over-produced Hollywood style, and gives the flailing zombie movie a much needed jolt of good old fashioned charm.

Woody Harrelson is the primary purveyor of said charm as Tallahassee, a good ol’ boy from the sticks whose matchless zombie killing deftness is, for him, simply a means to an end.  That end being the acquisition of a yellow, spongy log of processed decadence known as the Twinkie.  Jesse Eisenberg (“Adventureland”) is endearing and sympathetic as his neurotic companion, Columbus, who’s managed to stay alive  thanks to his antisocial tendencies and his rigid obedience to an enumerated set of rules that ensure survival of any zombie encounter.  They, along with a couple of sisters discovered along the way dubbed Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), forge an unlikely bond amidst the chaotic bloodletting of the undead world around them.

The script, written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, is exactly what it needs to be for this type of picture to work. It’s short (88 minutes), funny, and packs in the show-stopping set-pieces without getting carried away with big-budget extravagance.  In fact, its relatively slim $21 million budget may be just what saved this film.  The thought of what it might have become with a bloated $100 million+ budget is enough to make me cringe.

Jokes fall flat here and there and the constantly superimposed zombie survival rules eventually overstay their welcome, but thanks to the filmmakers’ unpretentious but clever approach to the material, good performances, and one of the greatest cameos I’ve ever seen, “Zombieland” defies the odds and becomes that rare event in which critic and fan become one.

Sony is reportedly moving forward with a Venom spinoff movie, although “Spider-Man 4″ probably takes priority with production rumored to begin on that film in early 2010.

“Zombieland” co-writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick have been hired to write the script and have already turned in a couple of drafts. “We’ve written two drafts of Venom, and the studio has it, and they’re pushing forward in whatever ways they push forward,” Wernick said.

And will the two films be linked by a common thread or continuity or exist in the same world? “We can’t really talk about that, unfortunately,” Wernick said, “Basically, the studio and Marvel and the Arads are taking our drafts and going beyond and figuring out what’s the next step.”

Director: Ruben Fleischer
Writer: Rhett Reese
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Cast: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone

Release: October 9, 2009