Though she didn’t exactly strike box office gold with Stop-Loss, Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce is not shying away from grown-up drama. She’s locking down a deal to direct The Knife,the true story of a South Central LA gang member who became a paid informant for the FBI.
And while she freely admits to Deadline that it’s the sort of project that studios aren’t exactly jumping up to produce, she has the backing of Imagine’s Brian Grazer and a firm commitment from Universal.
Plus there’s the compelling subject matter, with the informant living a Departed-style existence that could’ve ended his life at every turn. While his secret collaboration with a tough-nosed agent helped lead to a wealth of drug and weapons busts, gang leaders also implemented a “kill all snitches” policy to hunt him down.
Vineet Dewan penned the script and spent time with Peirce breaking the concept down to sell to studios. “We spent about four months working for free to put this together, because directors and writers have to go in with a movie like this totally figured out,” Peirce tells the site. “Many of my filmmaker and screenwriter friends tell me they’ve had to do the same. You just have to look at it as the answer to the question, what do I have to do to get a good movie made? A two-minute pitch isn’t good enough, and is there anything more mind-numbing than reading an outline? I fell in love with the two characters and immediately saw a classic buddy movie with this rookie gang-banger and a hard-nosed FBI agent who have to overcome a mutual distrust.”
With $30 million to make it happen, it looks like Peirce is shoving this ahead of the faerie story Wicked Lovely she became attached to late last year.