Steve Zaillian Movie Updates

Michael Shannon has been cast as George Westinghouse in The Weinstein Company’s The Current War.

Fox Searchlight has optioned The New York Times feature The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Suitcase Full of Trouble and has set Film Rites' Steve Zaillian and Garrett Basch to produce.

20th Century Fox has just closed a 7-figure deal for film rights to the international spy thriller Red Sparrow by Jason Matthews.

Ridley Scott and Steve Zaillian will produce a reimagining of the BBC's The Day Britain Stopped for Fox.

Paramount Pictures and Indian Paintbrush are closing a deal to acquire the rights to the international bestselling novel Syndrome E. Originally published in France, the Franck Thilliez novel is the first in a series, and it will be released in the U.S. by Viking this summer.

Paramount and Indian Paintbrush have hired Chris Terrio to write A Murder Foretold, the fact-based drama based on the David Grann article in the April 4 issue of The New Yorker about a series of high-level murders in Guatemala.

At the launch of his exhibit The Factory Movie Lovers at the Centre Pompidou, the usually chatty Michel Gondry dropped news of another project he appears to be working on, adding to his already busy slate. The director revealed that he is adapting Philip K. Dick‘s Ubik for the big screen.

I'm told that Steve Zaillian is being brought aboard by Paramount to rewrite the new Jack Ryan film. Chris Pine will play Ryan in the Tom Clancy-created series, and Lost's Jack Bender is directing. Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing.

Time Crimes, the remake of the 2007 Spanish time travel film, has been moved by Steve Zaillian from United Artists to DreamWorks. Zaillian, who'd set it up at UA to produce, has also committed to rewrite the script.

Sony won't comment on the budget for the pics, but it appears that the studio, director David Fincher and producer Scott Rudin aren't thinking cheap. According to insiders, scribe Steve Zaillian's deal for the second pic is said to be record-breaking.

Sony Pictures has acquired rights to remake the U.K. miniseries "Red Riding," and is negotiating with Steve Zaillian to write the script and Ridley Scott to direct.