LA producer Barry Levine and his film outfit Blatant Pictures have partnered with Gary Smith's UK company Intandem Films to raise a $100m film fund for big-screen adaptations of comic books from Blatant's sister company Radical Publishing.The first two projects are $35m action adventure Legends, to be directed by Patrick Tatopoulos of Tatopoulos Studios, and the $25m Medieval, from the graphic novel by Ian Edgington, described as an 11th century The Wild Bunch, which Til Schweiger will star in and co-produce.Levine was previously a producing partner for Dark Horse Comics and Dark Horse Entertainment, where he shepherded films including Damn Nation at MTV Films and Paramount, Rex Mundi at Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil. and RIPD to be directed by David Dobkin and produced by Neil Moritz and Dark Horse's Mike Richardson for Universal.With Blatant/Radical, he has already landed a deal with Universal's Rogue Pictures to back two projects - Blood On The Tracks and Hercules, a reinvention of the classical character as a craggy-faced long-haired anti-hero. The initial designs for Hercules were created by Weta Workshops in New Zealand and legendary artist Jim Steranko.LA manager David Schiff is packaging consultant on the projects. A deal is already in place for a graphic novel trilogy created by Vin Diesel through his interactive label Tigon Studios, while other actors working on comic book concepts include Chad Michael Murray (One Tree Hill) and Hong Kong's Edison Chen. Blatant/Radical is represented by Jon Levin at CAA. Intandem's fund-raising has been reinforced by its recently struck relationship with SOCOM8 SA, an international commodities trading and real estate development firm based in Los Angeles, Costa Rica and Dubai which is one of the key investors in Blatant/Radical. Radical and Intandem got together when they both worked on GallowWalker, the Wesley Snipes-starrer which will be released by Lionsgate domestically in 2008. A Radical comic book of GallowWalker will also be introduced to the market next year. Metropolitan has bought the film for France, Toshiba for Japan and VCL for Germany.Blatant/Radical will officially unveil its properties to the comic book world at Comic-Con in July in San Diego.

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