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Hollywood's Poisoned Spy Hunt
James Bond and Jason Bourne are facing some stiff competition from Alexander Litvinenko.
The race is on to bring the riveting story of the poisoned former KGB operative to the big screen, with two Hollywood studios jockeying to be the first out of development and into the multiplex.
Per Variety, Warner Bros. is teaming with Johnny Depp's production company for a movie about the death of Litvinenko, who was murdered in November after being slipped a fatal dose of polonium-210. The studio has secured film rights to a forthcoming book on the case, with Depp on board to produce and possibly star.
But hot on Warners' heels is Sony's Columbia Pictures, which outbid Warners for the rights to a competing book about the headline-grabbing crime—possibly the most intriguing spy mystery since the end of the Cold War—for Michael Mann to adapt and helm.
Warners paid an unspecified sum for Sasha's Story: The Life and Death of a Russian Spy, which is being penned by New York Times London bureau chief Alan Cowell for publication next year by Doubleday.
Cowell has been on the Litvinenko beat since the story broke just before Thanksgiving. He is expected to take a leave of absence from the Times to write about how the former secret agent for Russia's FSB—the successor to the Soviet Union's infamous KGB—became disenchanted with the Kremlin and turned into one of the country's most outspoken critics, living in the U.K., where he suffered a painful, baffling demise at the hands of unknown assassins.
The radiation poisoning, which Litvinenko blamed on Russian president Putin from his deathbed (an allegation fiercely denied by Moscow), triggered an ongoing probe by British counterterrorism officials that has spread to a handful of countries in Europe where traces of the polonium have been found.
Depp's production banner, Infinitum Nihil, will develop the Warner project, and the actor will produce along with Infinitum head Christi Dembrowski and Initial Entertainment Group president Graham King, whose company funds Infinitum.
But Depp must outmaneuver Mann, who teamed with Columbia to snatch the film rights to Death of a Dissident, a book being written by Litvinenko's close friend and spokesman Alex Goldfarb and his widow, Marina Litvinenko. Columbia beat out Warners, Universal and Paramount during an auction, paying $500,000 upfront and promising another $1.5 million once the production begins, based on little more than a four-page proposal and sample chapter.
Mann will write the screenplay for the real-life spy caper and is slated to direct and produce through his Forward Pass shingle in association with producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher at Red Wagon. Death of a Dissident is expected to focus heavily on Litvinenko's private life as well as his dealings with the increasingly powerful FSB, Putin's ascension to Kremlin boss and the sketchy interplay of Russian oligarchs and the country's mafia.
Other books on the case are also in the works. Random House is releasing Polonium, by Wall Street Journal scribe Steve LeVine (who was once reporting partners with the late Daniel Pearl in Pakistan) and Litvinenko's 2002 memoir, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plan to Bring Back KGB Terror, is slated to be reissued later this year.
The film rights to those books are still up for grabs. So far.
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