Logan director James Mangold to take on corrupt cops with The Force

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

James Mangold has got to be feeling fairly good right about now, just two weeks after its release, LOGAN is approaching $500 million worldwide and has received quite a lot of positive attention. Mangold isn't about to rest on his laurels however as Deadline reports that he's currently in talks to develop and direct THE FORCE, an adaptation of Don Winslow's upcoming novel of the same name.

Winslow's novel is set to be released on June 20, 2017 and deals with Denny Malone, a highly decorated albeit very corrupt NYPD detective who finds himself caught in a trap and must "walk the line between betraying his brothers and partners, the job, his family, and the woman he loves." The project is being set up at 20th Century Fox, who acquired Winslow's novel last year before it even had a title, and the search is on for a writer to develop the film alongside James Mangold. THE FORCE isn't the only Don Winslow project set up at Fox as a little over a year ago Ridley Scott was attached to direct THE CARTEL, which follows DEA agent Art Keller as he engages in a decades long feud with Adán Barrera, a drug lord who Keller put away but has recently escaped from prison.

"The Force" has already received plenty of major praise from Winslow's fellow authors, with Stephen King calling it "mesmerizing" and "a triumph" before comparing it to THE GODFATHER, "only with cops. It's that good." Not bad.

A synopsis of "The Force" via Amazon:

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop. He is “the King of Manhattan North,” a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of “Da Force.” Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he’s spent on the job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He’s done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.

What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city’s history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

Based on years of research inside the NYPD, this is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting and heartbreaking story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban living full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting and dividing us today.

LOGAN is currently playing in theaters, so make sure to check it out if you haven't already!