I think Tony and Ridley Scott must be having a competition to see how many movies they can attach themselves to as director, even though they couldn’t physically make them all of them before they die. It seems every week one or both has a new flick they’re lining up, and this time it’s Tony, who the LA Times reports is in talks to take on a John Grisham thriller.
He’s circling The Associate, which is set up at Paramount with Shia LaBeouf onboard to star, a script by The Departed’s William Monahan and Lorenzo Di Bonaventura (Transformers) producing. It’s certainly a decent amount of talent, and could be just what Grisham and Scott need. While both produced a lot of hit movies in the 90s, neither have had as much success in the new millennium, as no film directed by Scott or based on a Grisham story has cracked $100 million in North America since 1998.
Scott really could do with a hit, as his latest Unstoppable, nearly got stopped completely, because the financiers weren’t sure he and Denzel were enough to turn it into a hit.
The Associate is about a young lawyer blackmailed into taking a job at a high-profile firm to pass along secrets to a shady defense contractor. So basically the same as virtually every other Grisham book.