According to the Heat Vision Blog at The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros is securing the rights to the "Bleach" manga series. Peter Segal, director of "50 First Dates," is expected to produce the film.

The Heat Vision article describes the series as centering on "a 15-year-old boy who has the ability to see ghosts and meets a female Soul Reaper, a member of an order that escorts the souls of the dead. A fight with an evil spirit causes the Reaper to transfer all her power to the boy, leaving her stranded in the human world and the boy taking over her job as a fighter of evil."

Written and drawn by Tite Kubo, the series has been weekly in Japan since 2001. As is common for popular manga in Japan, the series has already spawned an animated television show and several animated films. "Bleach" even took to the stage in the form of five musicals which follow aspects of the storyline and two that run outside of the series plot. The English language animated "Bleach" TV series appears on Cartoon Network.

Since his first feature, "Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult," Peter Segal has been better known for comedies. The Heat Vision article mentions, "He's been seeking to expand his portfolio by taking on darker, more action-oriented material." Segal was developing "Shazam!" based on DC Comic's Captain Marvel character for several years, but the status of that project is unclear. Segal's other films included "Tommy Boy" with Chris Farley and "My Fellow Americans" with Jack Lemmon and James Garner.

As noted in the Heat Vision article, Warner Bros is also developing a live action feature version of the anime classic "Akira." Leonardo DiCaprio is producing that project, with a script currently in the works from Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. "The Book of Eli" writer Gary Whitta previously wrote a draft.