Here's something interesting, so pay attention. Kimberly Peirce, best known from Stop-Loss project, will direct The Knife. At this moment we know that an upcoming Universal drama is inspired by the true story of a South Central gang member who volunteered to be an informant for the FBI. Check out the rest of this report for more details.
I like the description: “For over a decade, hundreds of blood and crip gang members in South Central Los Angeles have been put away thanks to the efforts of one deep insider. He is not a cop. He is not a Federal agent. This man is one of their own. For the first time ever, he reveals to Guy Lawson how he's brought down some of LA's worst criminals, and how he's stayed alive.”
So, the upcoming project is actually based on the 2008 GQ article ‘The Inside Man' by Guy Lawson, and now we learned that Peirce and screenwriter Vineet Dewan worked on a 60-page scriptment and graphic novel that sold the studio on their take on the adult drama.
“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,” said Peirce in an interview with Deadline and continued:
“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? We walked in and said, here's the movie, it will cost under $30 million. And we walked out with much more than a development deal.”
Peirce also added: “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. The agent wants to infiltrate the gang at a time when the FBI had no understanding of gang structure.
They were effective but there are so many conflicts that play out, like can you be an informant without being a rat, to can you trust an informant if his reason for cooperating isn't that you will otherwise send him to prison for another crime he committed?”
Let us know what you think about this kind of project, and stay tuned!
The Inside Man
