While Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps is nearing its release date, Oliver Stone has his eyes set on a new project involving romance and Mexican drug cartels. He’s signed on to direct and produce Savages, an adaptation of Don Winslow’s novel that will hit stores on July 13.
Winslow and Stone will collaborate on the script, with the author writing the first draft. This according to Deadline.
In the book, two friends from Laguna Beach share the same girlfriend and a thriving business growing and distributing the best-quality pot on the planet. When they resist being muscled by a Mexican drug cartel, the girl is kidnapped and the ransom is every cent they’ve made for the last five years. They agree to pay but hatch an alternate plan to get her back, get revenge, and then get lost.
The Pulse: With the success of the cinematic interpretations of Dennis Lehane’s novels Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone and most recently Shutter Island, it has helped profile the crime/mystery genre. Don Winslow is poised to see his material breakthrough to the mainstream. In 2007 his film The Life and Death of Bobby Z get the DTV treatment from Sony Pictures. And an adaptation of The Winter of Frankie Machine, which would have saw the reunion of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese is still in limbo. I say, anything that can get an author’s work more visible to the public, especially a crime and mystery writer, I’m all for it.
