The Reaper is coming back to our screens and this time, unlike in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, there’ll be no Twister or Battleship involved. Harvey Weinstein, noting the appetite for Clint Eastwood’s **American Sniper **among global audiences, has moved fast to grab the rights of Nicholas Irving’s marksman memoir The Reaper to turn into a TV miniseries to run over five nights.
The Reaper’s full title, Autobiography Of One Of The Deadliest Special Ops Snipers, gives a clue to what’s involved. Part of the US Army’s 3rd Ranger Battalion, Irving accounted for 33 kills in four short months in 2009 while serving in Iraq.
“The Reaper is a gripping story about a great American soldier that we are so proud to be a part of,” said Weinstein. “Nick Irving’s true bravery and heroism will make for some of the most riveting television ever seen and inspire patriotism in anyone who experiences it.”
Conscious, no doubt, of the controversies that dogged American Sniper resurfacing, Weinstein pre-empted them with a doughty defence of Eastwood’s box-office hit. “No one was ever saying, ‘There’s a really good story about a human being who hands out money to children, builds houses, works hard. The Jimmy Carter story,’ he told Indiewire of the film’s media coverage. “You sit in an editorial meeting and [pitch] the Jimmy Carter story and they go, ‘Fucking boring. I don’t give a shit.’ Our priorities are so screwed.”
The production will get underway this summer with publishers Macmillan Entertainment and The Weinstein Company working to secure a network home for the series.