The Hollywood producer behind the successful Bourne thrillers has signed up for a planned film adaptation of a spy novel written by controversial former British politician Jeffrey Archer.
Jeffrey Steiner, a Toronto businessman who secured the film rights to 10 of Archer's works last year, says he has now signed a deal with Frank Marshall of The Kennedy/Marshall company to produce what is hoped to be the first film in a series of thrillers based on the books.
The first book, a 1986 bestseller called A Matter of Honour, is an espionage thriller, similar to the Robert Ludlum novels that Marshall turned into a blockbuster series starting with 2002's The Bourne Identity.
"We see a good parallel here," Steiner said in an interview. "We are thrilled."
Last year, in an interview with The Globe and Mail, Archer suggested that the Bourne films' star, Matt Damon, would be perfect in the role of Adam Scott, the young former military officer at the centre of A Matter of Honour. But Steiner says they are a long way from casting and still shopping for a scriptwriter.
The Archer film, which Steiner says he aims to partly shoot in Toronto, is at least two years away from theatres. He says the plan is to follow it up with an adaptation of another Archer thriller, Honour Among Thieves, which would be rewritten to feature the same main character. The current concept also calls for the books to be set in the present day, not the Cold War of the 1980s.
In a statement distributed by Steiner's company, New Franchise Media, Marshall says Archer's stories could become a successful series: "Jeffrey Archer is a master storyteller whose suspenseful plots and compelling characters have the potential for a multi-feature-film franchise with both domestic and international appeal."
The project will also need the backing of a Hollywood studio. Marshall has a deal that sees Sony Pictures get a first look at his projects, Steiner said.
Steiner, a Conservative and the former head of Toronto's economic development agency who spearheaded the building of a new waterfront film studio, has known Archer since the 1980s through Tory political connections.
The two kept in touch even as Archer's political reputation hit rock bottom, when he was jailed for two years for perjury and perverting the course of justice in 2001. The conviction stemmed from a 1987 libel action he launched against a London tabloid over allegations he had slept with a prostitute and paid her £2,000 to leave the country.
Archer, a multimillionaire from his books who has dedicated himself to raising money for charity since his release from prison, has sold film and TV rights for his novels several times before, but no big-budget films have ever materialized.
Marshalls' latest instalment in the Bourne franchise, The Bourne Legacy, is now being shot and is slated for a 2012 release. Billed as a reboot of the series, it will not feature Matt Damon in the leading role.