With Gerald Butler having been looking to get an Afterburn movie off the ground for a little while now, the film has taken a huge step forward by bringing in Jung Byung-gil to direct.

Deadline broke the news, with the director of The Villainess to helm the big-screen adaptation of the Red 5 Comics miniseries created by Paul Ens, Scott Chitwood, and Wayne Nichols. Butler has made no bones about talking this up as a passion project of his, and he will take centre-stage as the hero of the day, Jake.

For those not aware of Afterburn, the official blurb on the tale reads:

Afterburn tells the story of a massive solar flare hitting the Earth and wiping out of Europe, Africa, and Asia. But amid the chaos, there’s profit to be made as former oil roughneck Jake turns treasure hunter and retrieves valuable items from the burn zone. Along the way, he must face rogue armies, rival treasure hunters, and mutated survivors.

The movie adaptation is pegged as a “futuristic action adventure” set in a world where all of the technology across Europe has long been on the blink. Skipping forward five years, and Butler’s Jake will be on a mission to find the Mona Lisa. It goes without saying, of course, that this task won’t be quite as simple as it may sound.

As is ever the case, the hope is to spin this off in to a silver screen franchise, with a whole plethora of valuable artefacts perfectly in place for further outings.

With Into the Blue’s Matt Johnson currently working on the screenplay, the plan is for Afterburn to start filming in the second half of this year.