It seems neither heroes nor villains can do it all themselves in movies these days.  A new project from writer Ahmet Zappa (The Odd Life of Timothy Green) is being compared to The Avengers as it features a mash-up of major movie icons.  Zappa’s Monster X centers on a supergroup of famous monstrous icons like Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Mr. Hyde and more (ten in all).  The story centers on the characters who assemble in order to defend humanity against a greater threat.  Zappa co-wrote the script and will further develop it before shopping it to buyers, although Benderspink has optioned the initial iteration.  Hit the jump for more.

It seems that every project in Hollywood these days is either a reboot, a sequel or an adaptation pulled from the pages of a comic book. We’ve got a new report that the latter is happening with Black Bull Media’s comic, The New West. The story follows disgraced LAPD detective Daniel Wise as he traverses a near-future Los Angeles robbed of its technology by an electromagnetic pulse bomb. The two issue-comic drops Wise, whose assets are only a horse and a sword, in an attempt to rescue a kidnapped mayor. The comic will be optioned by Chris Bender, JC Spink and Jake Weiner of Benderspink, in collaboration with Wizard magazine founder, Gareb Shamus. Hit the jump for more on The New West.

Paramount acquired the feature rights to the DC comic The Mighty earlier this summer.  Variety reports the studio has hired Drew Pearce to adapt the screenplay.  The comic, written by Peter J. Tomasi and Keith Champagne, centers on America’s first and only superhero, Alpha One: “a cop whose life was saved by Alpha One as a child has uncovered his hero’s dark plan that will put them on a collision course of an ordinary man versus a super-man.”  BenderSpink partners Chris Bender and JC Spink (Arthur) will produce with Jake Weiner (Leap Year).

Pearce is also working on two Marvel properties at the moment in Iron Man 3 and Runaways.  This all can be traced back to No Heroics, the superhero sitcom he created for ITV2.  Read the synopsis for The Mighty issue #1 after the break.