I truly do not envy Sean O’Keefe and Will Staples right now.
Writers of the PlayStation 3 videogame Lair, the duo has been tapped to take a stab at a Jerry Bruckheimer Films project called Apaches, from the novel of the same name by Lorenzo Carcaterra, according to Variety.
Apaches is the story of six retired New York City cops who decide to take the law and their disability pensions into their own hands to stop a drug smuggling ring using their brains, brawn, and connections. The first fiction novel by Carcaterra, the book was the subject of a bidding war back in 1997 when Touchstone beat out Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. to the film rights.
Yes, you heard me correctly: Bruckheimer and company have been holding onto this project for 12 years–and therein lies the problem.
Since that initial bidding war, the task of adapting the novel has passed through the hands of several other action-suspense screenwriters–including Marshall Todd (Bad Boys II), John Ridley, John Fusco (The Forbidden Kingdom) and David Klass (Walking Tall)–all of whom have failed at bringing a script to the table that everyone likes.
Thankfully, O’Keefe and Staples have more than just a poorly received videogame on their credits list:
[They] are generating heat for two scripts: World’s Most Wanted, which Neal Moritz will produce at Universal, and their adaptation of the book The Cruelest Miles that Walden Media and Mark Johnson are prepping to start lensing early next year. They also penned The Murder of King Tut for Sony and helmer Roland Emmerich.
The more I read about Apaches and its sequel novel Chasers (published a decade after the acquisition), the more I like the idea of the story and think it would make a great movie. It sounds to me what would happen if you took Walt Kowalski from Gran Torino and teamed him up with Burke and his Family from the Andrew Vachss novels, all tinged with a “Homicide: Life on the Street”-like viewpoint.
At least that’s what it’d be like if I wrote it.
Okay, maybe I do envy them a little bit, after all.