Sam Raimi Can Make A Dennis Lehane Adaptation Too

Sam Raimi has signed on to develop and direct a big screen adaptation of Dennis Lehane's The Given Day for Columbia Pictures. Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, Dennis Lehane's long awaited eighth novel tells the story of two families – one black and one white – swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists; immigrants and ward bosses; Brahmins and "ordinary" citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power.

Beat cop Danny Coughlin, Boston Police department royalty and son of one of the city's most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family, and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.

Featuring the most influential figures of the day – Babe Ruth; Eugene O'Neill; leftist activist Jack Reed; NAACP founder W.E.B. Du Bois; Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's ruthless, red chasing attorney general; cunning Massachusetts governor Calvin Coolidge; and an ambitious, young Justice Department lawyer named John E. Hoover.

Coursing through some of the pivotal events of the time – including the Spanish Influenza epidemic and culminating in the Boston Polce strike of 1919 – The Given Day explores the crippling violence and irrepressible exuberance of a country at war with, and the thrall of, itself. As Danny Luther, and others around them struggle to define themselves in increasingly turbulent times, they gradually find family in one another, and together, ride a rising storm of hardship, deprivation, and hope that will change their lives.

Stewart O'Nan, author of Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and Snow Angels calls the new book "Rollicking, brawling, gritty, political, and always completely absorbing," ... "a rich and satisfying epic." The Given Day will be published on September 23rd by HarperCollins.

Dennis Lehane adaptations have attracted A-list talent, and have lead to two Academy Award wins and five nominations. Clint Eastwood directed Mystic River in 2003, and Ben Affleck made his directing debut with Gone Baby Gone in 2007. Martin Scorsese is nearing the end of production on Shutter Island, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, Ben Kingsley and Michelle Williams.

source: Variety