Big Screen, Little Screen, Big Book, Little Book

DreamWorks has acquired The Travelers, the latest thriller by New York Times best-selling author Chris Pavone. Picture Company partners Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman will produce. To be published in March 2016, the book is a Hitchcockian thriller with shades of Mr. And Mrs. Smith and North By Northwest. Will Rhodes is a Gotham-based journalist who unknowingly works for a spy agency posing as a luxury travel magazine called Travelers. After meeting a mysterious and beautiful woman on his latest international assignment, Will finds himself drawn into a tangled web of global intrigue, and it becomes clear that the network of deception ensnaring him is part of an immense and deadly conspiracy — and the people closest to him, including his wife, might pose the greatest threat of all. Pavone also wrote bestsellers The Expats and The Accident.

 

A new period drama for the BBC is SS-GB from the pen of Len Deighton. The drama is likely to end up being a five-part limited series. Kate Bosworth will star in the role Barbara Barga alongside Sam Riley who is set lay the role of Archer. Adapted by screenwriters Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, the story takes place in London 1941 and a ‘what-would-have-happened-if’ scenario. The novel, published in 1978, was a popular book and has become an iconic alternate history tome.

CBS has put in development Marple, a drama series featuring a version of Agatha Christie’s iconic character. Inspired by Christie’s Miss Marple 12 novels and 20 short stories, the project will be written by David Wolstencroft, creator of the long-running British spy series Spooks aka MI-5.

... More Christie - 20th Century Fox has acquired the feature rights to Agatha Christie’s classic mystery novel And Then There Were None, and the studio has set The Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum to direct. Eric Heisserer will adapt Christie’s 1939 novel, which has sold more than 100 million copies to establish itself as the all-time biggest-selling mystery novel.

BBC One has given a green light to McMafia, an epic drama event series set in the international world of organized crime, from writer-director Hossein Amini (Drive) and director James Watkins (The Woman In Black). Inspired by the 2008 bestseller by Misha Glenny, McMafia feaqtures David Farr (The Night Manager, Spooks, Troy – Fall of a City), Peter Harness (Doctor Who, Wallander, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell) and Laurence Coriat (Wonderland, Me Without You). Inspired by Misha Glenny’s 2008 bestselling book McMafia, a hard hitting look at global crime and its far reaching influence, Hossein Amini and James Watkins have created a drama event that centres around one Russian family living in exile in London.

 

Working Title’s dynamic duo Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman along with Robyn Slovo and Piodor Gustafsson. Matthew Michael Carnahan penned the script. Martin Scorsese is exec producing alongside Nesbo and Niclas Salomonsson, who reps Nesbo. Working Title’s Liza Chasin and Amelia Granger will also exec produce. The film – and bestselling book series- revolves around idiosyncratic detective Harry Hole in the Oslo police department.  This particular story has Hole investigating the murder of a woman whose scarf is found wrapped around a snowman. Interestingly enough, Nesbo also says he's not dedicated to forcing the film's story to stay located in Oslo, so perhaps Scorsese will move it to a location somewhere in the United States? We'll have to wait and see.

And lastly ....

Why, oh why, oh why? It's another movie that just doesn't need to be remade. Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi's AMBI Pictures have officially announced a remake of Christopher Nolan's 2000 thriller Memento, starring Guy Pearce and Carrie-Anne Moss. It's one of many films ("400 additional critical hits, commercial blockbusters and cult favorites") that AMBI acquired in picking up the Exclusive Media Group film library. They claim in the press release that the remake will "stay true to Christopher Nolan’s vision and deliver a memorable movie that is every bit as edgy, iconic and award-worthy as the original." Okay. Do we really need this?