McCarthy has surprised everybody by writing his first spec screenplay. Nick Wechsler, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz, the producing trio behind the adaptation of McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winner The Road, have just closed a deal to take The Counselor off the table with a preemptive acquisition.
The terrain of the script is reminiscent of the rough and tumble world depicted in No Country For Old Men. The protagonist in The Counselor is a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation. While McCarthy’s ICM agents Binky Urban and Ron Bernstein were expecting McCarthy to deliver his next novel, he instead surprised them with the spec script before returning to the book.
The faster this thing gets made the better. Because I really want to see it.
Agreed. I would also like to see a script about the Adventures of Ron Bernstein & Binky Urban.
“The Adventures of Bernstein & Binky” seems like it should be a whole series of films.
I would agree with you if only it didn’t involve the same schmucks involved with The Road. They took a fucking amazing book and made it into a cinematic experience so bad I would have preferred an actual apocalypse.
This is actually McCarthy’s second screenplay, the first was The Gardener’s Son 1976, which was broadcast on PBS and actually nominated for a couple of emmys.