The director of Captain Phillips and the Bourne films. The writer of Man on Fire and L.A Confidential. This could be remarkable.
There are very few directors who could film a man reading the phonebook and make it absolutely compelling, but in the case of Paul Greengrass, he’s one of those filmmakers.
Bloody Sunday, United 93, Captain Phillips and three Bourne films are testament to his superb skill but for his next project, he’s turning to one of the most famous characters from a gangster classic.
In Brian DePalma’s The Untouchables, Kevin Costner’s performance of Eliot Ness defined a man who had the courage, nous and skills to take down Al Capone, but in Torso, we’re going to see a very different side to the U.S. Treasury Department agent who enforced Prohibition in Chicago.
It’s clear that Ness has definitely finally learned the Chicago way – “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue!” – because according to Variety, Greengrass’ next film will be an adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis and Marc Andreyko’s graphic novel Torso.
In Torso, Ness has to assemble a team of retired cops to find a serial murderer who dumped his victims’ torsos in a river.
The graphic novel won the 1999 Eisner Award for Comic Book Excellence and the Comics Alliance have listed it as the eighth Best Noir Comic of all time.
If this isn’t enough to get you excited, you’ll be happy to know that Brian Helgeland is the man who wrote the original screenplay for Torso. Film fans might know that Helgeland is responsible for writing Man on Fire, LA Confidential, Payback and Mystic River.
Expect this to be tough, dark and bloody brilliant. We can’t wait.
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