John Grisham's 'The Racketeer' Picked Up by Fox 2000, New Regency (Exclusive)

2:33 PM PST 2/12/2013 by Borys Kit

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Daniel Espinosa, who helmed Universal's hit "Safe House," is developing the adaptation as a directing vehicle.

Random House

Fox 2000 and New Regency are teaming up to adapt The Racketeer, the latest novel from John Grisham.

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Double Feature Films, the shingle run by Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, is on board to produce the adaptation, which also has Daniel Espinosa developing the project as a directing vehicle.

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Espinosa will exec produce with his manager and producing partner Shelley Browning.

Racketeer sees a federal judge murdered at a lakeside cabin and the contents of his safe emptied. The only man who knows the whos and whys is a former attorney serving time in federal prison who hopes to parlay that into getting revenge on the people who put him there.

The book hit shelves in October with an initial printing of 1.5 million copies. It hit No. 1 on both The New York Times and USA Today best-seller charts and has been on the lists since its release.

A search for a writer to adapt the material is underway.

Espinosa, repped by UTA and Magnolia Entertainment, is the Swedish director of Snabba Cash who made his directorial debut with Safe House, the Universal action thriller hit that starred Denzel Washington and Ryan Reynolds. He is now in preproduction on Child 44, a thriller set in Soviet-era Russia that will star Tom Hardy and Noomi Rapace.

Double Feature’s credits include the Steven Soderbergh thriller Contagion and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. Sher also was a producer on Django Unchained.