Yes, Jim Sheridan‘s 1993 collaboration with Daniel Day-Lewis is getting that rare treatment. Neither are involved, sadly, but Emma Thompson will reprise her role of lawyer Gareth Peirce — who, it should be said, happens to be a real person — for a new thriller, The Secret Evidence. ScreenDaily (via ThePlaylist) reports that Nicholas Racz (The Burial Society) will direct the film, which he’s in the midst of co-writing with Cerie Bullivant. And, while the latter’s no hotshot screenwriter, he himself was detained and put under house arrest for two years on terrorism charges that were never actually proven. His lawyer throughout that ordeal? You can probably figure it out.

Evidence will examine a similar issue, being the story of “a young British couple mistakenly caught up in the war on terror who turn to [Peirce] to get one of them out of prison.” But it gets a little more complicated when the girl — who, it seems, is not even a suspected terrorist — and her kin are soon “subject to attack from the UK Government’s secret service.”

So, more of the politically-charged material that made Father such a powerful viewing experience, only attuned to a modern climate; I’ll keep an eye out, then. Production on The Secret Evidence is slated to begin this fall (should financing come together), thus placing it somewhere in the late 2013 territory. So far away, yet so much closer than we realize.

Is Gareth Peirce a character you’d like to revisit? Is this the right story to do so with?