Monday, November 15, 2004

Latest Script Deals

Tom Cruise has bought Christopher Reich's The Devil's Banker to bring to the big screen. Story follows a female British spy and a U.S. agent/forensic accountant who join forces to stop a terrorist attack aimed at the United States.

Richard Price will adapt his own novel Freedomland for Scott Rudin and Joe Roth. The book deals with the aftermath of a carjacking that becomes a racially charged media sensation.

Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason's blockbuster novel The Rule of Four has been assigned to newbie screenwriters David Posamentier and Geoff Moore to adapt. (Warner Bros. bought the book back in June.) Plot follows four Princeton students who are on the verge of cracking the secrets behind the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 15th century Renaissance text that points the way to a fabled Roman treasure.

Greg Pace has been tapped to write an update to schlock horror meister William Castle's "The Tingler" for Columbia. Story is about a scientist who, while searching for a medical cure for fear, accidentally unleashes the Tingler, an entity that kills its victims with fear.

Harley Peyton will pen a sequel to "The Thomas Crown Affair" for MGM and Pierce Brosnan. The story will be based on Jules Dassin's 1964 thriller "Topkapi," which was in turn based on Eric Ambler's novel The Light of the Day.

Paramount has bought Bill Mason's memoirs Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief (co-written with Lee Gruenfield) for Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (team behind "The Commitments") to adapt. Mason stole over $35 million of jewels from the inner circles of high society over three decades.