John Wick director Chad Stahelski is set to direct the assassin movie Shibumi at Warner Bros. and has found a writer for the film in Matthew Orton.
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According to a recent report from Deadline, Orton (Operation Finale) will join Stahelski to pen the script for the planned action film, which will be directed and produced by Stahelski. The film, which is based on the 1979 novel by Trevanian, the name that American film scholar and writer Rodney William Whitaker penned most of his novels.
No official casting announcements for the film have been made as of yet, but expect more news to come now that the writer and director have been set. The film’s story focuses on the struggle between a conspiracy of energy companies that controls much of the Western World and a skilled assassin named Nicholaï Hel.
“Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master,” says the synopsis of the novel. “Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.
“Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind when a beautiful young stranger arrives at his door, seeking help and refuge. It soon becomes clear that Hel is being tracked by his most sinister enemy—a supermonolith of international espionage known only as the Mother Company. The battle lines are drawn: ruthless power and corruption on one side, and on the other… shibumi.”
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Most recently, Orton served as a writer and consulting producer on Marvel Studios’ hit Disney+ series Moon Knight. Prior to that, Orton wrote the 2018 film Operation Finale, which starred Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, and Mélanie Laurent.
