Given how successful Logan has turned out to be, both at the box office and with critics, one would assume that director James Mangold has his pick of projects when it comes to what he’ll do next. And while he has expressed interest in possibly making an X-23 film at some point down the road, it seems like he’ll be taking a break from the world of mutants for a while to bring us an adaptation of Don Winslow’s upcoming novel, The Force.
20the Century Fox acquired the rights last year and Mangold will help them develop the project in addition to getting behind the camera to direct. No writer has been chosen yet to bring the story to life on the big screen, but whoever the studio drafts in will be working closely alongside the Logan helmer to deliver what sounds like a very exciting movie.
From what we understand, The Force follows “a corrupt detective in the NYPD’s most elite crime-fighting unit,” and here’s how the official plot synopsis describes it:
All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.
He is “the King of Manhattan North,” a, highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of “Da Force.” Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.
What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.
Based on years of research inside the NYPD, this is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting and heartbreaking story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban living full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting and dividing us today.
For those keeping track, this won’t be Winslow’s first dance with Hollywood, as a couple of years back Oliver Stone adapted Savages, though it was a bit of a mixed bag. One of the author’s other novels, The Cartel, is also being eyed by some pretty big names in the biz (Ridley Scott, Leonardo DiCaprio) for potential adaptation. From the sounds of it, The Force is set to be another great piece of work from the writer and could just end up as cinema’s next big crime epic.
The next step will be casting and given that the project boasts a meaty lead role, it’ll be fascinating to see who Fox and Mangold rope in to star. Could they possibly convince Hugh Jackman to reteam with his Logan director? Time will tell, but we’ll be sure to let you know as more developments on The Force arise.