Things have been moving pretty quickly on Ridley Scott’s new project The Counsellor. The screenplay was written by Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men, The Road) who delivered the finished product to his publishers out of the blue. Ridley Scott was signed up mere weeks later and now the project is moving swiftly ahead, scooping up Michael Fassbender as one of the leads.
The story concerns a respected lawyer who thinks that he can outwit the system by dabbling in the drug trade but soon gets sucked into the murky underworld. Breaking Bad much?
Well, producer Scott Shwartz thinks that they’re on to a winner. “Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with his sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humour in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”
Speaking of disturbing and powerful works, Ridley Scott was also behind an abortive attempt to bring McCarthy’s masterpiece Blood Meridian to the screen some years ago. That eventually fell to Todd Field where it stalled again before passing to James Franco who’s also gone quiet.
Well, there’s no delay on The Counsellor as shooting for that’s getting underway in May.
