Back in the 1990s, you could hardly move for John Grisham adaptations. In the space of five years there were films of The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time To Kill, The Chamber, The Rainmaker and **The Gingerbread Man **(an original Grisham screenplay), often attracting hugely impressive casts, and directors of the calibre of Francis Coppola and Robert Altman. That hot streak may have burned out, but now Mark Wahlberg has belatedly jumped on the bandwagon. He's planning to produce and star in **The Partner.
The Partner was written in 1997, towards the end of that Grisham heyday, perhaps explaining how it missed being picked up before. This one's about a lawyer - of course - who's become disgruntled with his lot, and sets about embezzling a fortune from his firm and faking his own death. It works for a while, but his perfect crime eventually ends up not quite going according to plan, and there's a murder charge to throw a further spanner in the works.
John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) was attached to write and direct at one point, but he's now moved on to other things, making his replacement the first order of business for the new production.
Wahlberg is working in cahoots with Stephen Levinson, as he has done for years on Entourage (and recently Contraband). The film is developing at New Regency, whose Arnon Milchan was behind A Time To Kill, The Client, and Runaway Jury, the last Grisham to reach the screen (not counting Christmas With The Cranks*) in 2003.
A Canadian TV series of The Firm has been runnning this season on NBC, Global and AXN, and NBC are developing a project based on Grisham's Ford County short story collection. Are we looking at a Grisham renaissance?
*Not a legal thriller - just criminal.