The adaptation of crime novelist Lawrence Block’s A Walk Among The Tombstones is one of those movies that seems to be endlessly lost in the tangled weeds of development hell. But now a company called Cross Creek Pictures has rustled up some loose change from the back of the sofa to provide financing and I Am Number Four director DJ Caruso is interested in taking on the job of getting it made.
Block’s novel features his Matthew Scudder character, an alcoholic former cop (aren’t they all in hard-boiled fiction?) who does "favours for friends." He really means detective work, and he usually ends up among the worst of New York City’s scum and villainy. **Tombstones **finds him tracking down a heroin kingpin’s kidnapped wife and trying to get her back before those responsible chop off all of her various bits and mail them back with ransom demands…
Scott Frank penned the script years ago for Jersey Films partners Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, with the film originally set up at Universal and looking at luring Harrison Ford to play Scudder. But nearly 14 years later, nothing has happened.
Caruso could be the man to change that, though he already has at least one other higher-than-high profile job competing for his attention in the shape of Preacher, which he signed on to direct back in February…