Adapting a James Ellroy novel for the screen can be a dicey proposition. For every success that brings big rewards (LA Confidential) there are those that linger, never quite making headway (Joe Carnahan’s long-gestating take on White Jazz). But producers Vincent Sieber and Clark Peterson seem to think they’re on to a winner with the novelist’s 2009 tome, Blood’s A Rover.
The story, set in the stormy late 1960s and early 1970s, follows three men who have their own reasons for tracking a woman named Joan Rosen Klein. One is a tough goon working for J Edgar Hoover, another a heroin-addicted former cop who is building a mob-backed gambling mecca, and finally, a voyeuristic private eye who has his own set of enemies.
Ellroy, who most recently contributed to film by writing the script for Rampart, has signed on to the Rover adaptation as a producer and seems to think it’ll turn out well: “My most recent novel is — not surprisingly — also my best. The story is no less than the psychic inventory of America from 1968 to 1972,” he says in a statement picked up by Deadline. “I have no doubt that Clark Peterson and Vincent Sieber will fashion a splendid motion picture from this noir epic.”