The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
David Gordon Green is in final negotiations to write and direct a screen adaptation of John Grisham’s nonfiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town for Warner Independent Pictures and George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s production company Smoke House. (The Book Standard)
WIP teaming with David Gordon Green for two movies. David Gordon Green is in talks to write and direct a movie adaptation of John Grisham’s nonfiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town for Warner Independent Pictures and George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s production company Smoke House. The book is about Ron Williamson, a man who spent 10 years on death row in Oklahoma after being wrongly accused of murder. WIP and Smoke House bought rights to the book in December. WIP also bought worldwide distribution rights to Green’s Snow Angels, starring Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell. The movie, which premiered at January’s Sundance Festival, is an adaptation of Stewart O’Nan’s 1993 novel about a separated couple (Beckinsale and Rockwell) in a small town whose lives take a turn for the worse when the woman begins an affair with the husband (Nicky Katt) of her best friend (Amy Sedaris). (the Hollywood Reporter)
Clooney joins Grisham in Moral Movies Inc
December 10, 2006 by admin
Filed under General Articles, Movies
Clooney joins Grisham in Moral Movies Inc
John Harlow, Los Angeles
IN an unusual alliance of star power George Clooney, the Hollywood actor and producer, is joining forces with John Grisham, the bestselling author, to create films dedicated to exposing miscarriages of justice.
Grisham, who has blocked attempts to turn some of his novels into films, has agreed to let Clooney make one based on his first non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. Sources close to the 51-year-old author say that other films, television dramas and documentaries may follow.
For Clooney, who will direct The Innocent Man, it is a launch pad for his own “mini studio” called Smoke House, reportedly named after a hideaway on his family’s tobacco farm in Kentucky.
The book tells the true story of how Oklahoma police framed a failed baseball player for the murder of a cocktail waitress. He spent 11 years on death row until 1999 when DNA evidence cleared him and a prosecution witness was jailed in his place.
It took months of tough negotiations before Grisham would allow Clooney to work on The Innocent Man, which he regards as a “literary liberation” after years of subtly disguising real events behind some of his best-known novels.
“John gave George a tough time, no mercy, asking detailed questions like the lawyer he was, grilling him for hours over the telephone,” said a business associate last week. “Luckily he liked George’s last film, Good Night, and Good Luck, and came to trust him.”
The associate said that although the men are very different — Clooney is a globetrotting bachelor and Grisham is a family man who lives on a Virginia plantation — they liked one another and had liberal southern views in common.
Between 1983 and 1990, Grisham was a Democrat member of the Mississippi House of Representatives where he pressed for reforms to statutes based on racially biased laws.
Clooney came to his political views through his father, a newscaster who was well known in their native Kentucky. The actor, who is often compared with Cary Grant, has said that he wants to carry on getting paid “big bucks” for such entertainments as the forthcoming Ocean’s Thirteen so he can invest in smaller movies set in the South.
When The Innocent Man is filmed Grisham will be paid more than $1m (£530,00). He said he did not write it just for the money but out of anger at shoddy police and legal work that has ruined so many lives.
Although Grisham has not ruled out writing more legal fiction, which earned him more than £40m a year during the 1990s, he is said to be more interested in writing about baseball. (Times Online)
The Innocent Man
December 8, 2006 by admin
Filed under General Articles, Movies
LOS ANGELES (AFX) - George Clooney will produce a movie based on John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.” “It’s a project in development,” Clooney’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, said Thursday. He declined to release details of the agreement, but said no decision had been made on whether Clooney, 45, might direct or appear in the film.
Smoke House — Clooney’s company with producing partner Grant Heslov — bought the movie rights along with Warner Independent Pictures, Warner spokeswoman Laura Kim said Thursday. Warner Independent Pictures is a unit of Time Warner Inc.
“The script hasn’t been written,” she said.
Kim said she could not confirm a report Wednesday in Daily Variety that said Grisham would receive a seven-figure payment against a share of the movie’s gross receipts.
“The Innocent Man” is a nonfiction work about Ron Williamson, who spent nine years on Oklahoma’s death row after he was wrongfully convicted of the 1982 rape and murder of a cocktail waitress. Another man, Dennis Fritz, was sentenced to life in prison. Retesting of the semen and hair follicles used in the original case freed the men in 1999 and pointed to Glen D. Gore, who had testified against Williamson. Gore later was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Williamson drank heavily following his release from prison and died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2004 at age 51.
The Innocent Man
George Clooney will produce a movie based on John Grisham’s “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.” Clooney’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, said no decision had been made on whether Clooney, 45, might direct or appear in the film. Smoke House — Clooney’s company with producing partner Grant Heslov — bought the movie rights along with Warner Independent Pictures, said a Warner spokeswoman. “The Innocent Man” is a nonfiction work about Ron Williamson, who spent nine years on Oklahoma’s death row after he was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a cocktail waitress. (The Boston Globe)
Variety: The Innocent Man
December 6, 2006 by admin
Filed under General Articles, Movies
Clooney, Grisham team on ‘Innocent Man’
Actor buys screen rights to book with Heslov
By MICHAEL FLEMING, PAMELA MCCLINTOCK
Variety
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.
Grisham had some control under the old deals — he famously nixed a “Runaway Jury” package of star Will Smith and director Mike Newell — but he wanted to be collaborative in the creative process.
That meant unorthodox deals, as with “Mickey,” which he and director Hugh Wilson co-financed and self-distributed. Grisham’s movie appetite has been rekindled, and unfilmed titles “Bleachers,” “The Broker,” “The Testament” and “The Partner” are in various stages of rights discussions.
Grisham ultimately will be paid a seven-figure against gross participation deal if “The Innocent” gets made. But his approval of the WIP deal came only after several conversations with Clooney and Heslov and after sparking to their Oscar-nominated WIP film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”
Clooney will star in and produce “White Jazz,” a Matthew Michael Carnahan-scripted adaptation of the James Ellroy novel that Joe Carnahan will direct.
New Project: The Innocent
Clooney Buys The Innocent
George Clooney, producing partner Grant Heslov and Warner Independent Pictures have bought screen rights to the John Grisham’s non-fiction book The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. The book, published in October by Doubleday, 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 evidence was eyewitness testimony from the man ultimately convicted of the murder.The deal is the second in the past two weeks between WIP and Clooney who made a deal earlier this week to produce White Jazz (Empire Movies)
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