Warner Bros. Acquires Stephen King's BILLY SUMMERS with J.J. Abrams and Leonardo DiCaprio Involved
I’ve got some great news for all you Stephen King fans! Warner Bros. has snagged the rights to the horror author's bestseller novel Billy Summers and this project is shaping up to be a powerhouse project.
J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot and Leonardo DiCaprio's Appian Way will produce this highly-anticipated adaptation. And if all goes well, Abrams might even step behind the camera to direct with DiCaprio as the lead!
Screenplay duties are in the hands of Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Originally slated as a ten-episode limited series, the creative team decided that Billy Summers would be better served as a feature film.
The story centers on Billy Summers, “a hitman who is looking to retire and takes one last highly lucrative job to feather his nest. The job requires him to embed himself in a quiet town, where he pretends to be an aspiring writer (he actually pours himself into the prose). He sets up in an office with a direct view of where hitman Joel Allen will be delivered to face trial for shooting two men during a poker game. Allen also has committed enough murders for some high-level mobsters to be scared the gunman will incriminate his former employers to lessen his sentence. Summers, a meticulous craftsman, becomes more and more cynical about the mobsters who’ve hired him, and his skepticism is well warranted as things go awry following the job’s completion.”
Bad Robot continues its streak of Stephen King adaptations, with previous projects such as Lisey's Story, Castle Rock, and 11.22.63. Get ready for an epic hitman thriller with a dose of King's signature suspense!
Source: Deadline