In late October, word spilled in that Oscar-winning director – and all around ass-kicker – Martin Scorsese was eyeing THE SNOWMAN, an adaptation of the bestselling Norwegian crime-thriller by Jo Nesbø (who is basically the next Stieg Larsson). Today, as we await his swing at the family film, HUGO, comes confirmation that the director is heading back to familiar dark territory.
Scorsese will direct THE SNOWMAN, off a script by WORLD WAR Z scribe Matthew Michael Carnahan, for Working Title Films. Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner will produce, while Nesbo will get an executive producer credit.
Here’s the book’s official description:
Jo Nesbø’s antihero police investigator, Harry Hole, is back in a bone-chilling thriller that will take Hole to the brink of insanity.
Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf.
Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother—and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer.
No, you didn’t read that wrong: the lead character’s name is “Harry Hole”. In true pulp detective story fashion, Hole (who appears in nine Nesbø books), is a hard-drinking, plays-by-his-own-rules type of cop. Wouldn’t be any fun if he were squeaky-clean, would it?
It’s unsure when THE SNOWMAN will go into production, but it would appear as though it’s Scorsese’s next project. Now we await the casting of Harry Hole, which should be very interesting indeed.
Scorsese’s DEPARTED star Vera farmiga