Ed Brubaker’s Sleeper will be adapted for the movies. If you don’t know who Holden Carver is, we suggest you brush up on your comic book knowledge.

Sleeper is one of the darker more paranoid titles Brubaker’s worked on. Sure, Batman is pretty depressing at times but at least Bruce Wayne has money and power and is well liked. Holden Carver is kind of a sponge for pain and suffering. Well … not “kind of” … he is.

This from The Hollywood Reporter:

Rookie scribe Brad Inglesby has been hired to adapt the DC Comics/Wildstorm graphic novel “Sleeper,” which Warner Bros. picked up in August.

Tom Cruise, though not formally attached, reportedly has shown interest in the material.

Sam Raimi and Josh Donen are producing through their Stars Road Entertainment company. Gregory Noveck will oversee for DC, and Matt Reilly and Matt Milam will oversee for Warner Bros.

Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, “Sleeper” is a high-tech noir series published from 2003-05 that puts superheroes in a stylish, hard-boiled crime saga not unlike “The Departed.” The protagonist, Holden Carver, is a spy stranded in a criminal organization but in possession of a superhuman imperviousness to pain derived from an alien artifact.

Don’t get us wrong. We like Tom Cruise well enough. He’s a two-note actor. Good at what he can do — but at this point, he’s getting a little too old (not to mention weird and parental) to be playing characters like Carver. To us it’s like someone trying to cast Oprah as one of the X-men.

Storm never hoarded chocolate-chip cookies.