Robert B. Parker’s Spenser For Hire Returns To The Air Waves On Netflix With Mark Wahlberg!
Deadline reports:
- Netflix, Mark Wahlberg & Peter Berg Revive Robert B. Parker’s Spenser With ‘Wonderland’
Netflix has made a deal with Mark Wahlberg, Peter Berg and the Robert B. Parker estate to bring back for a potential series of feature films Spenser, the poetry-spouting, wisecracking boxer-turned-Boston-based private eye made famous in 40 novels by Parker, and in three seasons of the ‘80s TV series that starred Robert Urich.
The first film will be an adaptation of Robert B. Parker’s Wonderland, one of the eight Spenser mystery novels written by Ace Atkins, who took over the series after Parker died in 2010. The movie will differ from the novel, in that it begins with Spenser emerging from a prison stretch, stripped of his private investigator license. Here, he gets pulled back into the underbelly of the Boston crime world when he uncovers the truth about a sensational murder and the twisted conspiracy behind it.
Neal Moritz will produce through his Original Film banner, along with Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson and Berg, the latter through his Film 44 banner. Script has been written by Sean O’Keefe. Toby Ascher will be exec producer alongside Film 44’s John Logan Pierson…
…Now, he’ll get another chance to use the colors of that city (unless they cheap out and shoot in Canada) in reviving the Spenser mystery series, with enough past books to provide a blueprint for a reasonably priced series of movies that could add a new dimension to the streaming service. Another tough guy Parker series revolving around the brooding police chief Jesse Stone, has become a periodic CBS telepic with Blue Bloods star Tom Selleck playing the cop…
