Coming right after Mark Wahlberg‘s multi-hyphenated interest in The Partner, Variety has me thinking John Grisham‘s suddenly back in style. According to them, Adrian Lyne (Jacob’s Ladder, Fatal Attraction) may end his nearly ten-year retirement by adapting his novel, The Associate, with a script by William Monahan there to guide him along.

I could make a joke about the story centering on a lawyer, but we’re not going to poke fun at Michael Bay for making expensive action films, either. (Actually…) As it were, The Associate tells the story of “a recent Yale grad coerced into taking a job with a prestige firm after he’s given information about a multi-billion-dollar case.” When we first reported on the film, back in August of 2010, Shia LaBeouf and Tony Scott were the prospective star and director, respectively, and the story was said to follow “a young lawyer thrust into a high-profile law firm under the blackmailing guise of a corrupt defense contractor looking for secrets.”

LaBeouf‘s now out of the picture, though Variety claims Paramount would like to nab Andrew Garfield, who’ll be working on Broadway’s (excellent) Death of a Salesman revival until June. Well, everybody would like a shot at the fellow, but after he and Lyne two seemingly failed to go anywhere with the drama Back Roads, a proper pairing might just be in order.

And while Grisham‘s work can be too “airport thriller” for my own taste, the two of them could take pulpy material and make something that, if nothing else, turns out to be well-crafted entertainment. Maybe I’d prefer the young actor sticks to serious drama — something tells me The Amazing Spider-Man isn’t what he should be doing, if you catch my drift — but I don’t doubt he’d knock the role out of the park. Here’s hoping Lyne hasn’t turned rusty in the meantime.

Would you like to see Lyne return? Are The Associate and Andrew Garfield the right ingredients for a comeback?