Even though it’s just now finally seeing official release here in the US, the Russian supernatural blockbuster Night Watch was slick enough to get hard-to-say helmer Timur Bekmambetov a few new gigs.

The Russian director has grabbed the comic series The Red Star for development, making it the second comic book project he’s adapting for Universal – he also has the supervillain story Wanted on the short stack.  Although The Red Star probably hits a little closer to vodka-swigging home — creator Christian Gossett’s book takes place in a futuristic parallel universe where Communism and the Soviet Empire have survived the test of time, and where magic and the mechanisms of war work in unison. As internal corruption and perpetual border wars take their toll on the Empire of the Red Star, a hot blonde warrior-sorceress searches for her missing soldier husband.

At least Bekmambetov’s energetic hyperstyle seems to suit the material and should provide some killer visuals, with massive flying “sky furnaces” blasting the shit out of ground forces. I just hope they excise the book’s goofy spirit-world junk — the type of stuff that hampered that Final Fantasy movie.

I assume that Bekmambetov also plans to finish the trilogy he started – Day Watch has already hit screens in his mother country, though the third film in that series (Dusk Watch) might be traveling to North America for production.