Writing Pad

News on a pair of writers:

Variety says William Monahan (pictured) is scripting a fact-based thriller that's inspired by a Playboy article by Hillel Levin.

The film will center on the strange case of one Jim Keene, the son of a police chief who was arrested for dealing drugs.

In a deal to avoid serving a 10 years-to-life sentence, he was allowed to go undercover at a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane.

Keene befriends a man authorities believed murdered 25 young women and tried to get him to divulge the whereabouts of his victims..

Monahan is keeping very busy also writing the upcoming thrillers "Body of Lies", "Nothing in the World" and recently signed on to adapt a American version of the hit Korean film "The Chaser".

Meanwhile, fellow scribe Joby Harold will be staying Awake to adapt both Frank Miller''s comic book miniseries "Ronin"and Michael Reisman's children's fantasy novel "Simon Bloom, The Gravity Keeper", according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"Ronin" is all about a master less samurai who is reincarnated in a dystopian near-future New York populated by squatters, factions and mutants. The warrior must try to destroy a demon with a mystic sword.

Sylvain White is in line to call the shots on that flick...And as a fan of Miller's work I'm intrigued how this will translate to film with Harold at the PC or laptop

"Bloom" tells the tale of an 11-year-old and his two friends who acquire possession of a physics book that enables them to alter the physical properties of the world, including gravity

Harold gets to work on all of that as soon as he's done with "Army of the Dead".