George Clooney Heads Back To Italy In Search of THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE

By Neil Upton / June 25, 2011

Fox 2000 have acquired the rights to The Monster of Florence, a crime novel written by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi about their real life investigation into the unsolved case of a killer or killers (known as Il Mostro) who murdered 7 couples/14 people between 1974 and 1985. According to THR,George Clooney is attached to produce and star as Preston, an American who teamed with Spezi, a local crime author, to solve the case. Tom Cruise was interested in bringing the novel to the big screen a couple of years back and hired his Valkyrie screenwriters ChristopherMcQuarrie and Nathan Alexander to work on the script, but the Cruiser seemingly lost interest and the script then found its way to Clooney, who recently filmed The American in Italy (and has a home there) and his producing partner Grant Heslov. No director is attached at this time but Heslov, whose last film The Men Who Stare at Goats starred Clooney, may want a crack at this. And if not, Clooney's got a huge rolodex of friends and elite directors who would be dying to work with him on this, especially with the high-culture city of Florence as a backdrop. Of course, it's also going to be interesting to see who is cast to co-star with Clooney in the Italian role. The story sounds a little like an Italian Zodiac doesn't it? Well I suppose it is, kind of, but with a case that investigated 100,000 men, the longest manhunt in Italian history, body parts in the post, alleged evidence planting and that which eventually led to co-author Spezi being locked up for meddling and Douglas Preston being thrown out of the country, it is certainly ripe for adaptation. I have to admit that I'd never heard of this case before but the more I read about it the more I feel I need to read this book. It sounds fascinating, and if the movie is half as engrossing as Zodiac, I'm sold. And when was the last time Clooney attached himself to a project that didn't turn out to be gold? On Clooney's 2011 slate then - a small role in Alfonso Cuaron's 3D space epic Gravity with Sandra Bullock, his acting & directing political drama The Ideas of March and hopefully the lead role in Steven Soderbergh's The Man From U.N.C.L.E.