Universal Pictures has picked up the rights to Image Comics' "Cowboy Ninja Viking"

Universal Pictures has picked up the rights to the Image Comics series "Cowboy Ninja Viking" for "Quantum of Solace" director Marc Forster to tackle as his next film, Deadline reports. The adaptation previously was in development at Disney, but the script by "Zombieland" screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese was deemed too edgy.

Debuting in October 2009, the comic by AJ Lieberman and Riley Rossmo centers on the title character, the child of a psychotherapist who recruits patients with multiple personality disorder to create a unit of counter-intelligence agents called the Triplets. When those agents become out-of-control assassins, the deadliest Triplet of them all, Cowboy Ninja Viking, is called in to take them down.

Production is pegged to begin later this year after Forster finishes the Brad Pitt-starring horror adaptation "World War Z." Universal reportedly views "Cowboy Ninja Viking" as a potential franchise.

Stay tuned to CBR News for more developments on "Cowboy Ninja Viking"