Clooney and Heslov’s Smokehouse Acquires Three Minutes to Doomsday

George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures has acquired the film rights for Joe Navarro’s Three Minutes to Doomsday. The North American rights for the book were recently acquired by Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster.

As the FBI’s leading body language expert, Joe Navarro was sent to track down Rod Ramsey to report on his knowledge or association with Clyde Lee Conrad. It all started with a trembling cigarette: when Navarro asked Ramsay about Conrad, his cigarette shook. Navarro’s expertise enabled him to decipher the meaning behind Ramsay’s tic. Noticing this miniscule movement led him to a series of interviews in an increasingly complex relationship that would uncover one escalating revelation after another, until he eventually uncovered the most dangerous security breach in US history. Along the way Navarro had to develop Ramsay’s trust, engage and convince a skeptical federal bureaucracy, and spend hundreds of hours preparing for each of 42 interviews with Ramsay over the course of a year, as the west is increasingly vulnerable against the backdrop of the Cold War.

Navarro is assisted in his writing by Howard Means, who has collaborated on multiple New York Times bestsellers, including “See No Evil” and “Sleeping with the Devil,” both by Robert Baer. Baer’s books provided the basis for the film Syriana; Clooney received an Academy Award for his performance in that film.

Steve Ross and Paul Weitzman represent Navarro for Abrams Artists Agency. With principal offices in New York and Los Angeles, Abrams represents clients in all areas of the entertainment industry; the literary division represents writers, directors, composers, lyricists and designers in theatre, film and television.

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