Wow, this blog has become the 24-hour John Le Carré movie news site all of a sudden! Well, that's not just me; it's only because the Hollywood trades are spreading a lot of Le Carré news these days. Even in his late seventies, the author is a deservedly hot property. This Deadline story about a non-Le Carré script pickup may explain why. The author's son, Stephen Cornwell (Le Carré's real name is David Cornwell) has recently teamed up with Oliver Butcher to form a production company called White Hare Films, and according to the trade blog, "part of the company's mandate is to package his father's works into movies. That includes an adaptation of A Most Wanted Man, as well as the upcoming Our Kind of Traitor, the latter of which is being adapted by Hossein Amini." Amini (The Four Feathers) is making quite a name for himself as a spy writer. Besides the upcoming Shanghai (a period spy thriller starring John Cusack, Chow Yun Fat and Franka Potente), he's also written the script for the next Jack Ryan movie we've been hearing so much about, Moscow. (Perhaps it's not too late for Le Carré to change the title of his upcoming novel from Our Kind of Traitor to the name of some city?) Our Kind of Traitor, which comes out on October 12, tells the story of a vacationing couple caught up in a global war of wits between the Russian mafia and various unscrupulous factions within the British Secret Service. A Most Wanted Man (another one I haven't read, from 2008) examines the friction that still exists between "friendly" intelligence services in the modern-day context of the Global War on Terror.
The main point of Deadline's story, however, is not about the father, but the son, who's gaining quite a reputation as a writer in his own right. His script with Butcher, Message From the King, has just been acquired by FilmNation. The pair also penned the upcoming Liam Neeson thriller Unknown White Male.
