Tom Cruise and Sam Raimi (pictured) are setting up an adaptation of the DC Comics/Wildstorm comic Sleeper, created by writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips.

The project is mired in legal difficulties, since Sleeper is a spin-off from Wildstorm's WildC.A.T.s, and also features characters from Gen 13, both of which have separately been optioned to different studios. Cruise's interest in the project may well help to resolve these problems.

Sleeper follows Holden Carver, a covert operative who has been placed undercover in a villainous organisation led by the villainous TAO. Carver is known as The Conductor, as he is able to store pain that he should be feeling, and pass it on to others through skin contact, after being fused with an alien artefact.

Warner Brothers will produce the movie, although no writer or director have yet been assigned.