Warner Bros. are fighting back against the Disney/Marvel epic news of the week with the announcement in Variety that they are making a live action adaptation of Lobo, reminding us that they are the leading brand for taking risks with the darker characters of their canon. After all, this is the studio that made Watchmen and The Dark Knight – Marvel haven’t as yet given us something as adult as those.

Or are they the studio to take risks? The trade says the movie will be a special effects heavy PG-13 and not the hard R rating you would think a faithful (and successful) adaptation of Lobo would need. Are we to blame Watchmen’s sudden drop off in audience figures and final $185 million worldwide taking?

And then there’s the news that Guy Ritchie - he of Lock Stock, Snatch, Revolver and Rock N’Rolla fame – will direct.

Don Payne who co-wrote Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and My Super Ex-Girlfriend has contributed the final draft of the screenplay. This is just getting worse with every sentence!

For those unaware, Lobo is an alien interstellar bounty hunter…

“a seven-foot tall, blue-skinned, indestructible and heavily muscled anti-hero who drives a pimped out motorcycle, and lands on Earth in search of four fugitives who are bent on wreaking havoc…Lobo teams with a small town teenaged girl to stop the creatures”.

Joel Silver, Akiva Goldsman (who is also working on Fantastic Four reboot at Marvel we heard this week) and Andrew Rona will produce.

Is it faith in the quality of Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (which by the way, looks like it could be the most tiresome movie to hit our screens this year when it opens Christmas day) that Silver is letting Ritchie loose with another franchise, or simply a faith that Ritchie can compromise by stripping down what the fundamentals of a franchise is and water it down to appeal to a wider audience?

Production begins early 2010 on Lobo.