Variety reports that writers Bob Layton and David Michelinie are working on Shambler, a bigscreen adaptation of their comicbook.

“Touted as an action-horror-comedy, ‘Shambler’ centers on a scientist who creates a serum that reanimates dead tissue. He’s murdered but reanimated by associates as a mummy encased in black-and-yellow crime scene tape.”

Pic, budgeted at $4 million, is being touted at Cannes by Anne Marie Gillen, whose Hollywood lineage includes exec producing Fried Green Tomatoes.

Layton and Michelinie are authors of many of the “Iron Man” comic book stories and created characters, including Rhodey Rhodes and Justin Hammer (played by Don Cheadle and Sam Rockwell, respectively in Iron Man 2).

Gillen is producing for financier Odyssey Pictures Corp. with Maury Rogow and Ralph Boral. Odyssey’s John Foster, Layton and Michelinie are exec producing and the screenplay has been penned by Steve Barr, Layton and Michelinie.

“Dr. Samuel Pratt is a multi-doctorate scientist who is obsessed with raising the dead. But just as Sam is about to perfect his colossal breakthrough, an unfortunate series of circumstances puts him in conflict with organized crime. The mobsters kill Sam and take off with his irreplaceable research, hoping to sell the secret of immortality to the highest bidder. Pratt’s desperate fiancé and his shady lab assistants use the remaining prototype formula to bring him back to life. Humor mixes with horror as Pratt is resurrected and mummified, wrapped in police scene crime tape and out for revenge against the criminals who destroyed his life’s work. But time is against him. Sam must find a way to restore himself to true life before he denigrates into a mindless killing machine – the hulking anti-hero, who lurks in the shadows of LA’s underbelly, which the tabloids have dubbed: Shambler!!”