Screenwriter Aaron Stockard has drawn praise and accolades for his skills in adapting harrowing crime novels into gritty thrillers. He and actor/director/screenwriter Ben Affleck collaborated to create the 2007 kidnapping drama Gone Baby Gone, based on Dennis Lehane’s Boston-based detective novel, and the 2010 heist thriller The Town, inspired by Chuck Hogan’s Prince of Thieves. Both films were a hit with critics, and the latter, a bank robbery narrative, fittingly made bank. So it’s little wonder Stockard’s being brought on to adapt more tales of crime and betrayal.
Thunder Road Pictures, which co-produced The Town, has joined with Brazillian company RT Features to produce an adaptation of Thomas Perry’s Strip. And they’ve hired Stockard to turn what Publisher’s Weekly calls a “rambunctiously entertaining L.A. crime novel” into a sultry (and surely action-packed) thriller. According to Deadline, Strip centers on “A strip club owner [who] is robbed by a masked gunman just as he’s about to place his cash receipts in a bank’s night deposit box. The enraged and mobbed up club owner sends half a dozen thugs out to find anyone who’s spending large and probably doesn’t know they robbed a gangster. The security men come up with Joe Carver, who not only evades capture but becomes determined to make the gangster sorry he ever sought revenge.”
It sounds like a good fit for Stockard, who has been able to craft compelling films that adhere to their source material’s most important points. [Read a thorough examination of The Town’s adaptation here.] But while he’s working out the drafts, let’s begin speculating as to who should be cast! Share your thoughts in comments.
Who would you like to see in Strip?