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Ridley Scott Might Direct Cormac McCarthy's 'The Counselor' Next

by Alex Billington
January 31, 2012
Source: Deadline

Well I guess it's not going to be back-to-back sci-fi for Ridley Scott; the new Blade Runner sequel will come another day. Deadline is reporting that he is lining up his potential next project to follow Prometheus this year, and it's the new original screenplay written by author Cormac McCarthy titled The Counselor. Ridley has been speaking "directly to McCarthy" about this project, which is his very first "spec screenplay" he wrote last December and sold to The Road producers Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, and is likely to take this on next if everything comes together, but of course only time will tell what happens.

The Counselor is "reminiscent of the rough and tumble world depicted" in No Country for Old Men, the novel by Cormac McCarthy that the Coen Brothers' film is based on. It's set in the Southwest and follows "a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation." Steve Schwartz says: "Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It's a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy's wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy's most disturbing and powerful works." That's quite a pitch, but I'm very intrigued, especially with Ridley potentially at the helm.

They go on to make it sound like this isn't a for sure, closed deal yet, since Ridley is considering many, many different options following Prometheus (and that'll change even more if the film is a big hit this summer). "Those producers control all rights, and haven’t committed the film to any studio" yet, Deadline says. But if all goes to plan, "Scott intends to make it his next film and his followup to Prometheus." That's a quick turnaround for a fresh Cormac McCarthy script, but all the better. McCarthy has been working in Hollywood occasionally revising script, and writing novels, but I'm very excited to see what his first feature is all about.

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