So far, Matthew Vaughn has found amazing success adapting the work of others. Nothing wrong with that. He began his career with the Brit gangster film, Layer Cake, which first introduced people to the James Bondness of Daniel Craig. He followed that up with Neil Gaiman's Stardust, but he's found the most success of his career bringing comic books to the silver screen. Kick-Ass turned out to be a minor sensation a couple of years ago, quickly followed up by the awesome X-men: First Class. With a number of projects kicking around with Kick-Ass creator, Mark Millar, Vaughn is picking up the rights to an unreleased novel with plans to write and direct it.
Deadline reports that Vaughn will write and direct a big screen adaptation of Lexicon, an upcoming novel by Max Barry. The story centers on a secret society of poets that deploy words as weapons of persuasion. When a young woman joins their ranks, she falls in love with another in the group, which poets are not allowed to do for some mysterious reason.
The book doesn't come out until the middle of next year, but Vaughn became attached when Barry sent him an advance copy. Sounds like another case of writing books for the screen. A practice which I'm starting to hate more and more. Anyway, Vaughn will be busy as a producer on Kick-Ass 2, which should begin filming late this summer. In January he'll get crackin' on the sequel to X-men: First Class.
