While 7,772 petitioners are still waiting for that “Veronica Mars” movie (Warner Bros. is apparently just going to ignore $80,000 in potential box office receipts), Joel Silver is moving on with his life by producing “The Galton Case,” a Ross Macdonald mystery novel about private detective Lew Archer. ‘Galton’ is the eighth book in a series of novels about Archer. Why not start with any of the first seven tomes? It’s either that one through seven are really bad, or the eighth one is just that good. Regardless, Warner Bros. has acquired rights to the entire series (maybe they’ll work their way backwards), and they’re hoping to adapt the novels into an “elevated noir franchise” aka “The Spirit.”
The Lew Archer series was previously adapted to the big screen for the 1966 Warner Bros. film “Harper” and 1975 movie “The Drowning Pool,” the latter of which we can only hope inspired the rock band of the same name. Both films starred the late, great Paul Newman, and it’ll be interesting to see which actor Warner pays to try and fill Mr. Newman’s (Own) shoes.
It’s nice that Joel Silver is taking a break from thanking Robert Downey Jr. for saving him from Dark Castle Entertainment purgatory when he agreed to act in those “Sherlock Holmes” movies. Let’s hope producing “The Galton Case” and promoting “Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows” will keep Silver off the streets for a while, and one step further away from pitching “Fred Claus 2.”