Clooney Goes "Buy" The BookMichael Fleming and Pamela McClintock of Variety write in today's edition:
Warner Independent Pictures and Smoke House partners George Clooney and Grant Heslov are buying screen rights to John Grisham's nonfiction tome "The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town."
Deal is the second in the past two weeks between WIP and Smoke House; Clooney and Heslov earlier came aboard to produce "White Jazz."
Details are still being worked out in the Grisham deal, but Clooney and Heslov are solely producing at this point.
Published in October by Doubleday, "Innocent Man" is the true story of a gross miscarriage of justice that sent Ron Williamson to Oklahoma's death row for 11 years for a murder he did not commit. Among the flimsy evidence: eyewitness testimony from the man ultimately convicted of the murder.
Deal is the first studio pact in several years for Grisham, whose last novel adaptation was the Joe Roth-directed "Christmas With the Kranks." After "The Firm" became a blockbuster, such Grisham courtroom thrillers as "The Rainmaker," "The Client" and "A Time to Kill" routinely sparked fevered auctions and seven-figure movie deals, culminating in a then-record $8 million deal from New Regency for "Runaway Jury."
Even before studios stopped paying outrageous sums for books, Grisham and his longtime editor-dealmaker David Gernert changed the way they sold his titles. After a self-imposed hiatus on deals, Grisham returned but became more interested in quality control and less interested in big paydays...
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For the most part, I have enjoyed many of the Grisham-themed films that have been released, over the years. I'm also a bit of a sucker for the fact based film. Grisham is an excellent storyteller--I'm hoping he can be tapped to write the screenplay for the project...
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