DreamWorks has just landed the North American rights to Perfume, a film based on the international best seller “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by Patrick Sueskind.
The film will be directed by Tom Tykwer, which IMDB also has credited for part of the screenplay, along with Andrew Birkin and Bernd Eichinger with Caroline Thompson supplying the re-write.
The book is a serial-killer drama that takes place in the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift-an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”-the scent of a beautiful young virgin.
As for casting The Hollywood Reporter reported only weeks ago that Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman were cast as Giuseppe Baldini and Antoine respectively.
