The Handmaid’s Tale helmer Reed Morano and actress Blake Lively are now at the center of the latest efforts to advance a female-driven spy vehicle from IM Global and EON Productions. The Rhythm Section, penned by author Mark Burnell will be the IP from which Lively will reportedly star for the film’s production slate to commence later this year.
The announcement, in the wake of Lively’s recently-announced MMA drama,
Bruised, comes as a delightful additive to what has so far been a great summer of movie news, particulatly regarding female-led buzz titles like Charlize Theron’s
Atomic Blonde and Jung Byung-Gil’s festival favorite,
The Villainess. The book series, for which the film is being pitched as in the vein of
Jason Bourne and
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, has four installments to date, published by HarperCollins as of 1999 along with efforts reported as early as 2005 by New Line Cinema to advance an adaptation of their own that never came through.
Patrick (Lively) is on a path of self-destruction after the death of her family in an airplane crash, a flight that she was meant to be on. After discovering that the crash was not an accident, her anger awakens a new sense of purpose and she rises to uncover the truth by adapting the identity of an assassin to track down those responsible. The new, and lethal, Stephanie Patrick is on a mission to fill the void between what she knows and what she is told.
Producing are EON Productions longtime Bond duo Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli with locations slated for the U.S. and U.K., as well as Ireland, Spain and Switzerland. Burnell will also serve as executive produce along with Stuart Ford, whose IM Global is financing and, seperately, shares worldwide rights with WME Global.
