The hair, its gotta be the hair!
Marcus Sakey has had his novels optioned for film. But none of those deals generated quite the publicity of his most recent.
Deadline reported, and Marcus has confirmed, that Legendary Pictures has acquired the rights to BRILLIANCE, his forthcoming book. Part of the buzz was that this was a book that a number of studios were pursuing.
In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called “brilliants,” and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in — and betray his own kind. From Marcus Sakey, “a modern master of suspense” (Chicago Sun-Times) and “one of our best storytellers” (Michael Connelly), comes an adventure that’s at once breakneck thriller and shrewd social commentary; a gripping tale of a world fundamentally different and yet horrifyingly similar to our own, where being born gifted can be a terrible curse.
Marcus is especially thrilled Legendary and their track record: “Simply put, I’m over the moon. It’s always exciting to sell film rights, but to sell them to the people who have made some of my favorites (Inception! The Town Watchmen!) is a special thrill. Plus, not only are the producers Joe Roth and Palak Patel some of the best in the business, but they’re passionate about the book and the world it takes place in, and eager to get started.”
As Marcus said, Roth and Patel are major players. Roth has been around for decades and has been a part of films such as Young Guns, Armageddon and the recent Alice In Wonderland. Patel is a producer for Roth’s own production company and worked on Snow White and The Huntsman and Oz: The Great and Powerful. The two will be working with Legendary Pictures’ Alex Hedlund. As far as LP goes, in addition to the films Marcus mentioned, they have been a part of Nolan’s Batman trilogy as well as the Clash of The Titans films.
As the publisher description makes clear, this is ventures into the realm of science fiction and is not your typical Sakey novel.
“I’m especially delighted because Brilliance is different than anything I’ve written before. It’s high-concept and much broader in scope, which made it enormous fun to lose myself in. I don’t know how to write a book without loving it, but you love some more than others, and this is my favorite child. Other than my, you know, actual child.”
Marcus is an awesome guy and a hell of a writer. Dude deserves every bit of the success he has had and then some.
