The Winter of Frankie Machine
08-06-15, 04:18 PM
#26
Re: The Winter of Frankie Machine- De Niro & Scorsese!
EXCLUSIVE: William Friedkin will develop to direct The Winter Of Frankie Machine, an adaptation of the 2007 Don Winslow bestselling novel that once had Martin Scorsese and then Michael Mann attached to direct, and Robert De Niro attached to star. The project, which shook free of Paramount some time ago, hasn’t yet been set up anywhere. They’ll start fresh with a script that Winslow will either write or co-write. This comes after Winslow made a monster Fox deal for his current bestseller The Cartel, which continued the characters from Winslow’s 2006 novel The Power Of The Dog. The commitment to book rights and writing fees was around $6 million and Ridley Scott is aboard to direct a script that is being written by Shane Salerno, who co-wrote one of the Avatar sequels with James Cameron. Fox is courting Leonardo DiCaprio to play DEA agent Art Keller, whose blood feud with Mexican cartel kingpin Adan Berrera fuels a story that covers the start of the war on drugs and brings it to the present. For Winslow, getting Friedkin on his book is a dream. He “made the decision to become a writer after seeing The French Connection,” he said. “That how strong of an impact it had on me.”
While the stakes and the budget of The Cartel will be commensurate with what a studio like Fox spends on an impact film with Scott at the helm, Friedkin tells me he is eager to approach Frankie Machine similar to the way he did Killer Joe, that gritty adaptation of the Tracy Letts play that starred Matthew McConaughey and was one of the indie building blocks that got the actor to his Oscar performance in Dallas Buyers Club, followed by the classic HBO series turn True Detective. Friedkin said he wants to make this down and dirty, on a low budget. While those past Paramount incarnations of Frankie Machine bore budgets in the $70 million range, Friedkin wants to do this for under $15 million. The hope is for it to have the bite and burst of violence in films like Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.
The drama revolves around Frank Machianno, a mob hitman who has retired to run a bait shop. He agrees to help the son of a mob boss resolve a dispute with another Mafioso but is forced to turn into Frankie Machine again when he realizes he’s been set up to be killed. Salerno and Winslow will be producers on this, through the Story Factory label. You can read more of Friedkin’s words about this project in the lengthy interview with the director that appears right under this article, where, among other things, Friedkin said that Walton Goggins, the Justified star who moved to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, is a prototype actor to play the hit man, and that McConaughey would also nail it. They won’t approach an actor, or a financier, until they’ve got a script to show. But this is a seminal tight thriller novel by Winslow, who finally seems poised to get his due in Hollywood.
Friedkin will direct the small screen adaptation his film To Live and Die In L.A., and he’s working on the Mae West biopic for HBO.
While the stakes and the budget of The Cartel will be commensurate with what a studio like Fox spends on an impact film with Scott at the helm, Friedkin tells me he is eager to approach Frankie Machine similar to the way he did Killer Joe, that gritty adaptation of the Tracy Letts play that starred Matthew McConaughey and was one of the indie building blocks that got the actor to his Oscar performance in Dallas Buyers Club, followed by the classic HBO series turn True Detective. Friedkin said he wants to make this down and dirty, on a low budget. While those past Paramount incarnations of Frankie Machine bore budgets in the $70 million range, Friedkin wants to do this for under $15 million. The hope is for it to have the bite and burst of violence in films like Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.
The drama revolves around Frank Machianno, a mob hitman who has retired to run a bait shop. He agrees to help the son of a mob boss resolve a dispute with another Mafioso but is forced to turn into Frankie Machine again when he realizes he’s been set up to be killed. Salerno and Winslow will be producers on this, through the Story Factory label. You can read more of Friedkin’s words about this project in the lengthy interview with the director that appears right under this article, where, among other things, Friedkin said that Walton Goggins, the Justified star who moved to Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, is a prototype actor to play the hit man, and that McConaughey would also nail it. They won’t approach an actor, or a financier, until they’ve got a script to show. But this is a seminal tight thriller novel by Winslow, who finally seems poised to get his due in Hollywood.
Friedkin will direct the small screen adaptation his film To Live and Die In L.A., and he’s working on the Mae West biopic for HBO.
06-28-23, 12:21 PM
#27
Re: The Winter of Frankie Machine
Man… this one has been kicking around a while.
https://deadline.com/2023/06/the-bea...235426129/amp/
EXCLUSIVE: As his series creation The Bear turned in record Season Two ratings for Hulu, Christopher Storer is set to direct at Paramount Pictures The Winter of Frankie Machine, an adaptation of the 2006 Don Winslow novel. The film will be produced by Shane Salerno and The Story Factory, and Storer will use the Brian Koppelman & David Levien draft those writers did when Martin Scorsese was going to direct Robert De Niro in the lead role.
The deal was made before the WGA strike. There’s quite a backstory here, as not only Scorsese but also Michael Mann were once attached, and William Friedkin was briefly also, but that deal never made.
Winslow and Salerno received numerous approaches from major filmmakers over the past decade but never found the right fit and shot down all overtures until Storer came along. They had sparked to the initial season of The Bear, in which Jeremy Allen White plays a high end cuisine chef who comes back to take over a seedy Chicago eatery. They loved Storer’s passion for the novel, and that he was a fan of the original script.
Deadline uncovered the deal just after Storer’s currency is soaring as the second season of The Bear turned in Hulu’s highest ever ratings, with the show right in the middle of the Emmy race.
Winslow’s 2006 novel is about Frankie Machiani, a hitman for a San Diego mob family who’s dragged out of retirement when asked by an LA crime family boss to oversee a meeting between Detroit and LA crime families. He realizes quickly it’s all a set up to kill him. He needs to shake off the rust and dodge those killers until he figures out who is trying to kill him. The late Brad Grey had given the film a green light, until De Niro and Scorsese said they instead wanted to do a different hitman tale, The Irishman. In a guest column for Deadline, author Winslow revealed that it was all systems go until De Niro’s oft-collaborator Eric Roth gave him a copy of the non-fiction book I Heard You Paint Houses. Winslow said Roth was doing it to give his pal some research to play Frankie Machine, but De Niro liked that story so much he and Scorsese switched horses and he played another killer named Frank, in Frank Sheeran.
The deal was made before the WGA strike. There’s quite a backstory here, as not only Scorsese but also Michael Mann were once attached, and William Friedkin was briefly also, but that deal never made.
Winslow and Salerno received numerous approaches from major filmmakers over the past decade but never found the right fit and shot down all overtures until Storer came along. They had sparked to the initial season of The Bear, in which Jeremy Allen White plays a high end cuisine chef who comes back to take over a seedy Chicago eatery. They loved Storer’s passion for the novel, and that he was a fan of the original script.
Deadline uncovered the deal just after Storer’s currency is soaring as the second season of The Bear turned in Hulu’s highest ever ratings, with the show right in the middle of the Emmy race.
Winslow’s 2006 novel is about Frankie Machiani, a hitman for a San Diego mob family who’s dragged out of retirement when asked by an LA crime family boss to oversee a meeting between Detroit and LA crime families. He realizes quickly it’s all a set up to kill him. He needs to shake off the rust and dodge those killers until he figures out who is trying to kill him. The late Brad Grey had given the film a green light, until De Niro and Scorsese said they instead wanted to do a different hitman tale, The Irishman. In a guest column for Deadline, author Winslow revealed that it was all systems go until De Niro’s oft-collaborator Eric Roth gave him a copy of the non-fiction book I Heard You Paint Houses. Winslow said Roth was doing it to give his pal some research to play Frankie Machine, but De Niro liked that story so much he and Scorsese switched horses and he played another killer named Frank, in Frank Sheeran.
