Last August we heard that Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi were working on a comic book adaptation together.

The Sleeper comic book series is providing the basis of the film, with Raimi and Cruise producing. And Cruise may also star in the film too. We now have an update as to where the project is.

Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi aren't a pairing you would instantly put together. But they are teaming up to adapt Ed Brubaker's Sleeper. A comic book series which tells the story of Holden Carver. He is a covert operative who, after coming into contact with an alien artifact, is impervious to pain. Not only that but he has fast healing power, and can store pain and pass it onto other people. Sounds cool. His bosses send him into infiltrate a large crime syndicate, from where things kick off.

Not much else has happened on the project since that news came out, but Ed Brubaker has an update.

I talked to one of the producers a couple of weeks ago, and they have a new screenwriter that they hired. I don’t think they could all get on the same page. You know Hollywood, though. They usually go through a million screenwriters on one project.

Very true. It sounds like the usual shenanigans that happen at the script stage. He did tell MTV though, that Star Trek (Filmstalker review) has had an unexpected impact on the script.

If you remember in ‘Sleeper,’ there’s a ’suitcase black hole’ in the story. That was going to be part of the master plan of the bad guy in the ‘Sleeper’ movie, and then ‘Star Trek’ came out and it had this miniature black hole, and they’re like, ‘Now we can’t use a suitcase black hole,’ and it went back for a rewrite. I don’t understand why movies are like that. That’s like saying you can’t use World War II because ‘Saving Private Ryan’ did it already.

I have to agree with him. If that's how it is in his comic books, or it's a bit part of them, then why not keep it. God forbid a Hollywood film should be accused of being unoriginal, whilst sticking to the original material.

It doesn't look like filming will start any time soon though. Brubaker says this is around the seventh time that his material has tried to make it into a film. We shall see how successful Cruise and Raimi are. And as we know Tom Cruise is a busy man, and should he definitely want to star in it, that might drag it out more.

Anyone out there read the comic book series? Is the "black hole" he talks about a big part of the story. Should they be keeping it in at all costs?