Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Karen Gillan (Guardians of the Galaxy) star in Sleeping Dogs, a thriller that started filming in Australia this month. Adam Cooper is making his feature directorial debut with this project, working from a screenplay he wrote with his writing partner Bill Collage. Cooper and Collage’s previous collaborations include New York Minute, Accepted, Tower Heist, The Transporter Refueled, Exodus: Gods and Kings, Allegiant, and Assassin’s Creed.
The script Cooper and Collage wrote for Sleeping Dogs is based on the novel The Book of Mirrors by E. O. Chirovici. The film has the following synopsis: In the wake of a cutting-edge Alzheimer’s treatment, former homicide detective Roy Freeman is tasked with re-examining a brutal murder case from his past – the grisly murder of a college professor. Intrigued and fighting to regain his memory, Roy enlists his former partner to help him revive the investigation. This time though, things unfold very differently when they encounter a magnetic and mysterious woman: as he uncovers a tangled web of contradictions and secrets, Roy is forced to face a horrific reality that changes his world forever in the blink of an eye.
Crowe and Gillan are joined in the cast by Marton Csokas (the Lord of the Rings trilogy), Harry Greenwood (The Nightingale), and Thomas M. Wright (Everest).
Mark Fasano of Nickel City Pictures is producing Sleeping Dogs with Cooper, Collage, Deborah Glover, and Pouya Shabazian of New Leaf Literary. Matthew Goldberg, Cliff Roberts, Highland Film Group’s Arianne Fraser and Delphine Perrier, and Ford Corbett serve as executive producers. Nickel City Pictures and Highland Film Group are handling worldwide sales and are presenting the project to potential buyers at the European Film Market.
The description of Chirovici’s novel (pick up a copy HERE) is much more complicated than the synopsis provided for the movie. It goes like this: When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his time as an English student at Princeton in the late 1980s, documenting his relationship with the protégée of the famous Professor Joseph Wieder. One night just before Christmas 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home. The case was never solved. Now, twenty-five years later, Katz suspects that Richard Flynn is either using his book to confess to the murder, or to finally reveal who committed the violent crime. But the manuscript ends abruptly—and its author is dying in the hospital with the missing pages nowhere to be found. Hell-bent on getting to the bottom of the story, Katz hires investigative journalist John Keller to research the murder and reconstruct the events for a true crime version of the memoir. Keller tracks down several of the mysterious key players, including retired police detective Roy Freeman, one of the original investigators assigned to the murder case, but he has just been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Inspired by John Keller’s investigation, he decides to try and solve the case once and for all, before he starts losing control of his mind. A trip to the Potosi Correctional Centre in Missouri, several interviews, and some ingenious police work finally lead him to a truth that has been buried for over two decades… or has it?
Are you interested in Sleeping Dogs? What do you think of Russell Crowe and Karen Gillan starring in the film – and have you read the novel The Book of Mirrors? Let us know by leaving a comment below.