Peter Landesman (Concussion) has been hired to direct an adaptation of The Recount, the political thriller graphic novel written by army veteran Jonathan Hedrick. Landesman will also co-write the script alongside Nick Jones Jr. Don Handfield‘s Motor Content and Jonathan Kadin‘s KadinCreative are producing.
The Recount was published last November and is set in an unsettling yet recognizable American political climate where the U.S. President is assassinated by one of his own security detail. A Secret Service agent must then protect the Vice President at all costs from a conspiracy.
With nowhere to turn and no one to trust, the two women with completely opposing beliefs are forced to work together to fight back and preserve what’s left of American democracy. The adaptation is being described as having the political intrigue of House Of Cards mixed with the horror of The Purge.
Landesman said in a statement:
“As storytellers, we’re struggling to capture not just this fraught political moment, but what it means, and will mean, for our immediate futures. When I read this graphic piece, it made me yearn for the days when character and integrity had value, and what would happen when you pack that into an imperative to survive, not just to live, but to lead. I want this movie to look like what many of us are feeling.”
Landesman has experience in political films, having previously written and directed JFK assassination film Parkland, writing Kill The Messenger (which depicted Gary Webb‘s suppressed reporting about the CIA’s secret support of cocaine sales to fund the Nicaraguan Contras) and helming Watergate thriller Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down The White House.
So his involvement in The Recount makes sense, although this looks like it will be a bit more of a genre picture than his previous political works. There’s definitely an interesting hook here, and it will be fascinating to see how the film navigates the political divisions at the heart of the story.
#Peace.Love.TheRecount
