It's been very, very difficult lately to make a movie dealing at all with Middle Eastern politics, whether it's last fall's Body of Lies or even Syriana, which was successful, but seriously, did anyone understand what happened in that movie? But Charles Roven is riding high from having produced The Dark Knight, and well, if the man who brought us "Why so serious?" wants to make a movie about politics in Jerusalem, then he's damn well going to.
Roven and frequent collaborator Richard Suckle are putting together a movie based on Robert Stone's novel Damascus Gate, a thriller about a journalist who stumbles upon an extremist plot to ruin an accord between Palestine and Israel. THR says the book is a combination of character exploration and thriller, which is also sounding very Body of Lies from where I stand.
Eric Warren Singer, who wrote the upcoming banking thriller The International, will be responsible for the screenplay. That'll be an interesting gauge of how good this project will be; The International has potential to be surprisingly good for a February movie, so if Singer's got talent, we'll know soon enough. It might take more than talent, though, to get the moviegoing public interested in Middle Eastern politics.
