James Franco knows the killer next door.
British novelist Alex Marwood’s “The Killer Next Door”, the follow-up to the highly popular “The Wicked Girls”, is getting a film adaption. According to James Franco’s rep, the “Pineapple Express” actor will be developing the crime thriller for the big screen with Ahna O’Reilly (of “The Help” fame).
Franco and Vince Jolivette will produce through their Rabbit Bandini Productions, together with O’Reilly, who may also take on the lead acting role.
Marwood’s debut novel, “The Wicked Girls,” won her the Edgar Award for paperback original. Her follow-up novel, “The Killer Next Door,” was published in 2014 and focuses on six neighbours who are forced into an unlikely alliance without realising that one of them is a murderer who would do anything to protect his secret.
Franco and Jolivette have become prolific independent producers. Franco directed and produced two indie dramas this year — “In Dubious Battle”, based on John Steinbeck’s 1936 novel, starring Franco, Selena Gomez, Robert Duvall, Ed Harris and Bryan Cranston; and “The Long Home,” based on William Gay’s coming-of-age story set in 1940s rural Tennessee, starring Franco, Josh Hutcherson and Zoe Levin.
The “127 Hours” actor has also directed two adaptations of William Faulkner novels: 2014’s “The Sound and the Fury,” which played at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, and 2013’s “As I Lay Dying.” Franco was last seen in Sony Pictures’ “The Interview“, which he exec produced.
O’Reilly starred in “In Dubious Battle,” “I Am Michael” and will next be seen in the upcoming “All I See Is You.”
The deal for “The Killer Next Door” was made by Meg Davis of the Ki Agency, in association with William Morris Endeavor, on behalf of Laetitia Rutherford of Watson, Little.
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via Variety
