Logan writer Scott Frank to reteam with James Mangold on The Force

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

After sharing a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination with James Mangold and Michael Green for LOGAN, Deadline states that Scott Frank is set to reunite with Mangold for THE FORCE, an adaptation of Don Winslow's best-selling cop thriller. The most recent draft was penned by David Mamet, but it's said that Frank will be rewriting the script. Quickly snapped up by 20th Century Fox in 2016 before the novel even had a title, THE FORCE 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."

Deadline states that several A-list actors are already in the mix for the lead role of Denny Malone and that the studio is looking at THE FORCE as a high priority project. THE FORCE isn't the only project which Mangold is currently developing at Fox, as he's also working on a period drama about the race for dominance between Ford and Ferrari at the 1966 Le Mans World Championship. Deadline states that Matt Damon is currently circling the role of Mustang designer Carroll Shelby and that Christian Bale is eyeing the role of his driver Ken Miles, who were under orders from Henry Ford II to build the world’s fastest car.

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.