Great news for all you literary nerds out there such as myself. Cormac McCarthy, who has been working long and hard on his next New Orleans set novel, surprised his agents with a spec script titled The Counselor. According to Deadline, the producers behind the adaptation of McCarthy’s the road have already snagged the spec script up and are in the process of searching for a filmmaker itching to get their hands on what will more than likely be a closely watched film.
Deadline goes on to describe the world in which the story takes place, comparing it to the “rough and tumble world depicted in No Country For Old Men.” They then summarize the synopsis:
The protagonist in The Counselor is a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation. While McCarthy’s ICM agents Binky Urban and Ron Bernstein were expecting McCarthy to deliver his next novel, he instead surprised them with the spec script before returning to the book. The producers moved quickly and spent their own money to buy it in a sizable deal. They tell me they will go looking for a filmmaker as they talk to financiers.
“The spec falls smack in the middle of what everyone responds to with Cormac’s novels,” [Producer Nick] Wechsler said. [Producer] Steve Schwartz told me: “Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.” The script is contemporary, and set in the Southwest.
Anything that exposes more of the world to Cormac McCarthy’s masterful prose is fine by me. So far, adaptations of his work have resulted in two absolute home runs (No Country for Old Men, The Sunset Limited), one solid effort (The Road), and one studio-butchered mess (All the Pretty Horses – strangely, the finest of his novels adapted so far). Talks about adapting Blood Meridian – what some, including me, consider one of the quintessential Great American Novels – have roamed the blogosphere for years now, although from Ridley Scott to Todd Field to James Franco, nothing has ever come of it.
It will be interesting to see how his fiction designed specifically for the big screen (note: although No Country for Old Men was originally written as one before McCarthy decided to convert it to a novel) will play off. So, here is a film to keep your eye on and let us hope that the filmmakers and actors involved love and respect The Mac’s work enough to make a hell of a great film.
In the meantime, if you need some Cormac goodness to keep your occupied, I recommend the genius blog Yelping with Cormac. Say goodbye to the rest of your night.
