"Fantastic" director eyes another comic book story

Director Tim Story, whose "Fantastic Four" sequel opens in theaters Friday, has signed a deal to shoot another comic book-based movie, the DC Comics adventure "The Losers."

The Warner Bros. project follows a highly trained and eclectic Special Ops team that is set up, betrayed and left for dead. Its members go on a quest to find who sold them out and why, righting wrongs they encounter along the way.

The tales of "Losers" ran in the pages of DC Comics' "G.I. Combat" and "Our Fighting Forces" in the 1970s and revolved around the adventures of a misfit group of U.S. troops during World War II. The concept was relaunched about five years as a gritty modern action-espionage adventure.

Story, who did the first "Fantastic Four" movie in 2005, had been looking to move out of the fantasy and comic book realm when "Losers" came along.

"I told my agents I didn't want to do another comic book," Story said. "I had been in the world of fantasy and I wanted to do something very edgy, a realist action movie. I wanted to find something like a 'Bourne Identity' or 'Black Hawk Down."'

He was sent "Losers" and fell for it right away.

"I was like, this is great -- and then I found out it was a comic book," he said, laughing. When he read the comic, he found it to be "incredible."

Story said "Losers" probably will be his next movie, with casting beginning immediately. "We are going full steam ahead."

Story's credits also include "Taxi" and "Barbershop." "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" will be released by Fox on Friday.