This week in Page to Screen--PW's weekly column tracking film rights circulating and sold in Hollywood--a novel about a girl with ape DNA and a Bourne-esque hit man thriller.
One manuscript that's been stirring up quite a bit of interest on the left coast is Mark Greaney's thriller Gray Man. CAA is shopping the film rights to the book, which Trident sold to Berkley; Trident pitched the title as a Lee Child-like novel featuring a Jason Bourne-type hit man. (The hit man in the book, who has a moral code, has a bounty on his head and is racing through Europe trying to elude capture.) We hear studios have been looking, but no deal yet.
Also out on submission for film is Laurence Gonzalez's Lucy. Knopf bought the novel a few months ago from Gail Hochman at Brandt & Hochman, and Nick Harris, at RWSH, is shopping the film rights. Gonzalez is a National Magazine Award winner best known for his guy-friendly adventure-based non-fiction--the two National Magazine Awards he won were for pieces in National Geographic Adventure--so Lucy is a deaprture for the author. The novel follows a primatologist who, while doing fieldwork in the Congo, stumbles upon a girl who's been raised by apes Tarzan-style. When the primatologist brings Lucy back to Chicago with her, a media frenzy erupts when it's discovered the girl has a genetic makeup which, to put it mildly, challeneges the Watson-Crick standard.
