I always hold out hope for any good action/adventure movie, but this summary leaves me wondering where the character arc is. He goes from a ruthless killing machine to ... a ruthless killing machine. I think stories work better when the protagonist transforms into something opposite of himself. Like a nebbishy high-schooler gaining superhuman spider powers. Also, the summary says Bloodshot's main goal is to figure out who he was, but the problem from a story standpoint is there's no mystery there for the audience: We already know who he was. So we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for him to catch up to us in terms of knowledge. Sometimes, a situation like that, where you're two steps ahead of the main character as he finds things out, just results in boredom. Congratulations to the writer. It's a great achievement to sell a script. I just hope these items don't become issues when he ... Goes Into the Story.

Reading the tea leaves, CJ, while Bloodshot may have had an audience back in the 90s, that is two decades ago. And to my knowledge, there has not been this ginormous clamor to bring back the character. So while there is some pre-awareness value to the title, not a whole lot. Therefore for Sony to drop potentially 7 figures for a spec script and underlying rights to source material, I'm guessing the script has to be at least pretty good. Generally that means the story works well enough for the studio to feel like it plus concept warrants the $$. Maybe somebody has read the script and will provide some feedback [I haven't gotten it yet]. But your points are duly noted and show good instinct for what NOT to do in a script. Also, too, remember who is writing these summaries, typically NOT writers, so rarely have a clue what 'story' is.

Very true. Sometimes you have to trust the money.

Or it could be that execs are of the age that they actually remember collecting these :) Bloodshot came out at the height of the comicbook industry, just before the massive crash in the early 90s. On the flipside though -- Bloodshot and XO Manowar were really the properties that propped up Valiant as a publisher. There's definitely a fanbase out there. I never followed the book. One of the few that I didn't during that time. Probably for the same reasons the commenter above is put off before even giving it a chance. BUT -- plots do get recycled. THE PUNISHER story is a staple of 80s action films (family gets killed -- guy goes on a murderous rampage) -- Hell, it's Death Wish also. But the name recognition is why one project my step forward when another similar "original" one falls into the shadows. I'd imagine pitching Bloodshot with a spec was actually easier than selling a spec with a similar story/plot. It's just one of those things.