It would appear that Brooklyn director John Crowley is very much a man in demand in Hollywood, with news on two projects being lined up for the Cork native. Deadline is reporting that he will bring to screen an adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Goldfinch, which is set to be followed by an adaptation of John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black)’s The Black-Eyed Blonde.
The Goldfinch script has been written by Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy screenwriter Peter Straughan, and tells the story of Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New Yorker who survives a bombing at an art museum. Having lost his mother in the attack, he finds himself in possession of a famous painting, the titular The Goldfinch, and soon becomes embroiled in the art underworld.
The film will be produced by Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force, Brett Ratner for RatPac Entertainment, with Courtenay Valenti and Racheline Benveniste overseeing for Warner Bros.
His second project, The Black-Eyed Blonde, is being adapted by The Departed screenwriter William Monahan, and features famous fictional private detective Philip Marlowe. When a new client arrives: young, beautiful, and expensively dressed; and she wants Marlowe to find her former lover, he soon finds himself not only under the spell of the black-eyed blonde, but tangling with one of Bay City’s richest families and developing a singular appreciation for how far they will go to protect their fortune.
The film has received €38,150 in Fiction Development Loans from the Irish Film Board. It will be produced by Alan Maloney’s Parallel Films, who worked with Crowley on Brooklyn.