CastleBright Studios has picked up a collection of spy novels by acclaimed author Andrew Kaplan. “Scorpion,” “Dragon Fire” and “Hour of the Assassins” topped bookshelves in the ’80s and ’90s with their surprise twists and brimming action, and in the wake of the successful “Bourne” franchise, these similarly out-of-print spy thrillers will be dusted off and spun into action.
Toppers Jay Douglas and Nav Gupta will produce with their vee pee, Justin Kaplan, who put them in touch with the reclusive novelist through mutual friend Brian Garfield author of “Death Wish” and the Kevin Bacon starrer Death Sentence who hailed the novels as some of the top spy novels ever written.
Set apart from the others, Hour of the Assassins will see a stylized makeover with a skewed reality in the same vein as Sin City, and tells the story of a sympathetic assassin who becomes the hunted when the world’s most powerful regimes allow their top killers one synchronized hour to settle any last scores. Douglas and Gupta will also script the adaptation along with comic book scribe Heather Kenealy.
Whereas Scorpion, arguably the most popular of the Kaplan’s books, will stay truer to the novel, and centers on a loner agent of the same codename whose cynical sense of humor is outshined only by his stealthy talents. After being sent into the volatile Middle East to rescue a congressmen’s daughter sold into slavery, he discovers interweaving mysteries, high-voltage adventure and nothing is what it seems. With “Dragon Fire” serving as sequel material, a search is on for a writer to adapt.
CastleBright is currently developing the video game-based adventure Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars and is in preproduction on the sci-fi/actioner Level Seven.
