Ron Howard to Direct Twisted Film UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN

Movie Ron Howard by Joey Paur

Warner Bros. Pictures is putting together a new film project for Ron Howard to direct. The film will be an adaptation of the 2003 Jon Krakauer book Under The Banner Of HeavenThe studio has hired screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Hoover, Milk) to write it as well. Of course Brian Grazer is involved and will be producing the film as well. 

As for the films story it's pretty freakin' crazy, "it focuses on two brothers who murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother. The killers claimed they were acting on orders from God, consistent with their interpretation of a fundamentalist interpretation that goes back to the formation of Mormonism. The brothers were members of a splinter group called the School of Prophets, which adhered to original tenets of the faith that included polygamy and a belief that true believers could speak directly with God. These were rooted as the faith grew to a mainstream appeal, but the brothers remain convinced they were obeying God's command when they committed the heinous crime."

Whaaaaaaaat? Yeah, the crazy thing is this book is based on a true story. People can be nuts, but nutty people make for a great engaging movie. Howard and Grazer are currently prepping up the formula one racing film Rush, and they are now shopping around their adaptation plans for Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, now that Universal stupidly passed on it. What are your thought's on Howard toaking on this crazy religious crime thriller?

Here's a description of the book:

Jon Krakauer's literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. In UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN, he shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders. At the core of his book is an appalling double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this divinely inspired crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, savage violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five plural wives, several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach that any day now the world will be swept clean in a hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents. 

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is vintage Krakauer, an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates an otherwise confounding realm of human behavior.

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