Warner Bros set to adapt “The Galton Case” mystery book

PanARMENIAN.Net - Warner Bros and Silver Pictures have set Peter Landesman to adapt The Galton Case, one of the titles in the Ross Macdonald mystery series about private detective Lew Archer.

Landesman will look to reinvent the mystery series as Silver Pictures tries to launch a franchise. The series was previously turned into two movies; Paul Newman played Archer in the 1966 Warner Bros film Harper and 1975 film The Drowning Pool. The 1959 novel The Galton Case was the eighth book in the series, Deadline reported.

Landesman, a New York Times Magazine foreign correspondent, most recently scripted The Mission for Warner Bros. That film is about Operation Jaque, a daring rescue of 15 captives that included former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt from FARC militants who moved the hostages around in the Colombian jungles some of them being held as long as 15 years. That film has David O Russell circling as director, with Brad Pitt being courted to star. Landesman also scripted a movie based on former FBI #2 man Mark Felt, who admitted he was the “Deep Throat” who helped Woodward and Bernstein crack the Watergate conspiracy and end Richard Nixon’s presidency. That project is at Universal with Playtone producing.

On The Galton Case, Joel Silver will produce and Andrew Rona and Alex Heineman will be executive producers. Silver will partner with Random House Films on the movie, and RHF head Peter Gethers is exec producing with series rights holder Stephen White. Archer is a private eye who cracked dangerous cases in Southern California in the 1950s and 60s. In The Galton Case, Archer is hired to track down the lost heir to the Galton fortune. His path leads him through a trail of murder, deception and a tangle of secrets.

Silver Pictures just teamed with Todd Phillips’ Green Hat to produce the low budget hit Project X, which is in the early stages of being sequelized.