Movies
Mattson Tomlin is Writing the Live Action ‘BRZRKR’ Movie for Netflix, Based on the Violent Keanu Reeves Comic
Launched this year, Keanu Reeves co-wrote and co-created a comic series titled BRZRKR, notable for featuring a killing machine who looks a whole lot like, well, Keanu Reeves himself.
As we recently learned, Reeves will star in a live-action feature film adaptation of the tale for Netflix, with an animated series also in the works. Reeves will be producing the anime series, and reportedly also voicing his character from the film. Collider provides an update on the projects this week, reporting that Mattson Tomlin (The Batman) is writing the movie!
As for the animated series…
Reeves tells Collider, “We’re working with Netflix who have been very cool. They’re going to let us do an R-rated story which is cool. My ambition or hope is not to do a filmed version of the comic book so that they’ll have things in common, definitely the main character and his kind of rule set, but that we can take it to other places as well. We’re talking to a couple of different animation companies and trying to figure that out. And, again, for me I’m hoping to be inspired and influenced…there are some rules to the story, but I also want other creators to do their version of it. So I’m hoping to do a different version of a metaverse where in the sense having different storytellers with one set of rules but go other places with it. We’re working on trying to set up a company with the animation and we’ve hired a writer for the film, Mattson Tomlin. He’s been cool and just starting to put things together. That’s where we’re at.”
BRZRKR is being described as a “brutally epic saga about an immortal warrior’s 80,000 year fight through the ages. The man known only as ‘B’ (Reeves) is half-mortal and half-god, cursed and compelled to violence… even at the sacrifice of his sanity. But after wandering the earth for centuries, B may have finally found a refuge – working for the U.S. government to fight the battles too violent and too dangerous for anyone else. In exchange, B will be granted the one thing he desires – the truth about his endless blood-soaked existence…and how to end it.”
Published by BOOM! Studios, BRZRKR was written by Reeves and Matt Kindt.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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