'Spider-Man' Writer Boards Ridley Scott's 'Red Riding' (Exclusive)

Jamie Vanderbilt, the Amazing Spider-Man writer who wrote Zodiac, is heading back into gritty crime territory.

The scribe has been tapped to pen the script for Red Riding, Columbia’s adaptation of the popular British TV movies. Ridley Scott is attached to direct and is producing via his Scott Free banner along with Steve Zaillian and Film Rites shingle.

The Red Riding story adapts four books by David Pearce and tracks the disappearance and grisly murders of several young girls as well as police corruption in a British town. The stories took place from 1974 to 1983, followed a large cast consisting of a journalist, a solicitors, a reverend, a male prostitute, a businessman, many police officers, and assorted wives and lovers.

Columbia picked up the rights in 2009.

Scott Free's Michael Costigan and Film Rites' Garrett Basch are exec producing.

Vanderbilt showed he could tackle a sprawling serial killer tale with Zodiac, the acclaimed David Fincher movie that tracked killings that took place in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s and also featured a large cast.

With Riding, Vanderbilt, repped by WME and UFUSE Management, is also proving to be one of Columbia’s go-to scribes. On top of Spider-Man, he did a polish on Total Recall, the studio’s remake of the 1990 sci-fi action film that shoots this summer.