A lot of authors have to suffer when they watch their books get adapted by idiots into movies that are either awful versions of what they wrote or don't really resemble their work at all. Robert Harris, on the other hand, had the luck of seeing his book The Ghost adapted into Roman Polanski's movie The Ghost Writer. And from the looks of it he'll be getting lucky twice-- he tells The Telegraph in the UK that he's currently adapting his new novel The Fear Index into a screenplay, and that none other than Paul Greengrass is on board to direct it.
We heard back in June that Fox 2000 had picked up the rights to Harris's book, but at the time Greengrass was only "rumored to be interested;" apparently Harris now knows something that we don't, as he told the Telegraph that Greengrass is already on board. Though the book is about the stock market and not international spy operations, it seems like good material for Greengrass, following a genius who creates a profitable hedge fund but is eventually targeted by an intruder. With Harris currently adapting the screenplay though, and the book not even set to hit shelves in the United States until January, it will likely be a while before we see the movie take shape. Greengrass is also likely to direct Tom Hanks in Maersk Alabama, based on the true story of the American cargo ship that was held hostage by Somali pirates. Once Greengrass has tackled a story that intense and high-profile, a little bit of fiction about a hedge fund trader might be exactly what he needs.
