This afternoon we’ve got updates on two UK writers who will be keeping busy on new adaptations. First up, Simon Beaufoy, Oscar winner for Slumdog Millionaire and scripter of the currently-shooting The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, has been set to script an adaptation of Ben Fountain‘s National Book Award finalist Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
THR has the news on the project, which follows a 19-year-old Texan infantryman before he heads back to war in Iraq. Teaming with Film4, the project would be in partnership with the LA-based The Ink Factory, who are currently knee-deep in Anton Corbijn‘s highly-anticipated drama A Most Wanted Man, but hopefully this one will follow.
In other scripting news, Philip Kerr, a British author responsible for dozens of novels has been given a Hollywood gig. According to Deadline the author is set for The Poison Kitchen, a project that still has RED director Robert Schwentke. With a first pass by Ninja Assassin scribe Matthew Sand, the drama thriller traces the rise of the Nazi Party and is based on Ron Rosenbaum‘s 1998 book Explaining Hitler. Check out a synopsis below.
The true story of the Muenchener Post, the Munich newspaper that waged a war for more than a decade against the burgeoning Nazi Party and its leader Adolf Hitler, who referred to the broadsheet as the “Munich Pest.” After ascending to power in 1933, Nazi stormtroopers raided the paper, destroyed the editorial offices and printing presses and imprisoned the editorial staff, shutting down the paper for good.
Are you looking forward these two projects?