Painkiller Jane Directing Duo Promise a Hard R Rating for Their Adaptation

This summer, the horror-movie-making, twin-sisterly Soska Sisters announced that they’d be taking a crack at adapting Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti’s Painkiller Jane to feature film. And they want to reassure fans: this one will not be safe for network TV.

It has to be an R-rated character. I would love to see Marvel do Marvel MAX movies, where you do The Punisher for kids and then you do The Punisher as The Punisher. When you come to a character like Jane, she drinks, she fights, she fucks, she talks like you and I talk, and that’s an important part of her character… That’s why we’d be really disappointed if that ended up being a PG or a PG-13 film because if you look at the character… Kids are reading this kind of content. I mean, when I was a kid I was reading The Punisher. I was reading all this kind of stuff. I think people discredit kids and what they’re capable of tolerating. So Jane has to be true to the character and it’s got to be an R. We can’t tone it down or we’d tone Jane out of the entire script.

That’s Jen Soska speaking to Crave Online about the production’s plans. Painkiller Jane, created by Jimmy Palmiotti and Joe Queseda and first illustrated by Amanda Conner, follows the adventures of the titular crime-fighting ex-cop who can heal any injury, making her impossible to kill. Jane is currently the only film project featuring a female lead with superpowers that’s based on a comic book in the first place. And it’ll be the first one to hit theaters since Elektra, an honor that the Sisters are both excited and frustrated about. Excited, because they get to craft a new film heroine—frustrated because that’s such a rare opportunity. Says Sophia Soska:

I’m so excited about it because there are so few female superheroes that are leading movies. It would be obvious [to] put Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in something, and you’re still not doing that… It’s just exciting to see that girl fucking kick ass, and if that makes money, then all those all those other girls, hopefully, will get there chances to be starring [in their own] movies too.

The Sisters could not talk about which actors were currently in the running for the lead role of Jane, but could at least confirm that production had advanced that far.

(Crave Online via Superhero Hype)

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