March 28, 2015 - 10:17 AMT
“Gone Girl” author, Steve McQueen to co-write heist thriller

After she adapted her novel Gone Girl for New Regency, Gillian Flynn has been set by the financier/producer to join 12 Years A Slave helmer Steve McQueen to co-write a heist thriller that McQueen will direct, Deadline reports.

Deal was made by New Regency president/CEO Brad Weston, and the thriller is based on the 2002 British miniseries Widows, which was written by Prime Suspect‘s Lynda La Plante. That mini focused on a caper gone wrong, where four armed robbers get killed in a failed heist attempt and their widows team to finish the job

Film 4 will co-finance the film with New Regency and it will license free TV rights in the UK. The film will be produced by Iain Canning and Emile Sherman of See-Saw Films, who teamed with McQueen on Shame and also produced the Best Picture winner The Kings Speech and McQueen’s upcoming HBO project Codes Of Conduct. McQueen will also produce. Aside from Gone Girl, Flynn also wrote the bestselling novels Sharp Objects and Dark Places and she is re-teaming with Gone Girl helmer David Fincher on the HBO series Utopia, an adaptation of the British series.

After being in the middle of the last two Best Picture winners Birdman and 12 Years A Slave, New Regency is reloading its stock of prestige pictures, a list that includes the Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu-directed Revenant with Leonardo DiCaprio. Its next releases are the Jonah Hill-James Franco-starrer True Story, which Fox Searchlight releases April 17, and the Cameron Crowe-directed Aloha, which Sony and Fox release May 29. Fox will release The Revenant on December 25.

Photo: Twentieth Century Fox