Announced at Variety moments ago, critically-acclaimed writer Ed Brubaker is adapting the first arc of his critically-acclaimed book Criminal into a screenplay for what will assumedly be a critically-acclaimed film. The film will be put out by Jamie Patricof’s Hunting Lane Films studio, which has previously put out films like Half Nelson and Blue Valentine and has attached David Slade, who you’ll either know from the Twilight film Eclipse, the adaptation of 30 Days of Night, or perhaps the wonderful family-oriented film Hard Candy.
Focusing on focusing on the character of Leo, “Coward” follows the thief and heist planner through a job gone wrong in a dark and desperate world. Brubaker had mentioned in the back matter of recent Criminal issues that there were plans for a “Coward” sequel, so look forward to both a book and film option for that in the future. Generally, all of the Criminal arcs would make for great films, so who knows — we might have the next great Hollywood crime saga in the works.
We’ve often discussed Criminal here on the site and in the Multiversity Offices, and typically when asked to recommend Criminal, I personally have used the line, “Think of it kind of like Sin City, with the disconnected crime noir stories under a central title, except about a billion times better.” We have a lot of love for Criminal here on the site, so “excited” doesn’t really sum up our feelings for the film.
With Brubaker working on the screenplay himself, we’re pretty much in “can do no wrong” territory as far as the script goes, and we eagerly anticipate upcoming news on casting. Given Patricof’s involvement, it might’ve been safe to say Ryan Gosling would be cast as the lead role, but given a quote directly from the source article from Brubaker mentioning Gosling’s work in Drive, that doesn’t seem to be a case. Either way, cross your fingers.
