Remember the 1990s, when there seemed to be a new movie based on one of John Grisham’s legal thrillers? Well, if you’re missing those halcyon days, you might be glad to hear that Paramount Pictures has hired The Departed scripter William Monahan to adapt Grisham’s most recent bestseller, The Associate, for the big screen.
Shia LaBeouf is currently attached to star in the adaptation with Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing.
According to the plot description for the book at Amazon
Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.
But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want-even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.
Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.
With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains-from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country-and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world.
(Hey, my parents live near York, PA!)
No word on any additional cast or a director being attached to this, so for now it resides safely in the land of In Development.
