Martin Scorsese To Direct THE SNOWMAN - A Scandinavian Serial Killer Movie

Martin Scorsese's first and probably last children's film Hugo Cabret opens in the U.S. in just two days time but already the legendary filmmaker has setup a future crime project that sounds much more up his alley. The Hollywood Reporter say Scorsese will direct an adaptation of Jo Nesbo's serial killer tale The Snowman for Working Title films, the Brit outfit behind this year's incredible Tinker Tailor Solider Spy after Nesbo approved of the their choice (probably the easiest 'yes' of his career). Working Title optioned The Snowman a while back when Nesbo's seventh novel in his Oslo detective Harry Hole series became a big international hit and with so much buzz for David Fincher's impending take on the Swedish dark crime novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (not to mention the popularity of The Killing), the shingle are smartly banking on this new found European crime genre movement sustaining. The film will be based on Matthew Michael Carnahan's (The Kingdom, State of Play, World War Z) script and Nesbo has confirmed he won't stand in the way of the tale being taken out of Oslo where the book is set, but that seems unlikely as the setting is such a big selling point. Here's the plot of the novel;

It is November in Oslo and the first snow of the year has fallen. Birte Becker comes home from work and praises the snowman her husband and son have made in the garden. But they haven't made a snowman. As the family stand by the sitting room window looking out in amazement at the snowman, the son notices that it is facing the house. The black eyes are staring at the window. At them. Detective Inspector Harry Hole receives an anonymous letter signed "The Snowman." Later he finds an alarming common thread in all the old disappearance cases. Married women go missing the day the first snow falls. That same night Sylvia Pedersen is fighting her way through the first snow in a forest outside Oslo. She knows she is running for her life, but she doesn't know what from. Nor does she know what lies ahead. Fortunately.

Hole is described as an "anti-authoritarian, anti-sobriety cop", which is pretty much the same description for any screen detective in history. I wonder if Marty will bring Leonardo DiCaprio on board with him on this one? The Snowman definitely sounds like a project that returns Scorsese to the world of pulp crime thriller that he is so synonymous with. I'm intrigued to hear what Scorsese might do with it but the bad news is last month when rumours (now obviously true) first surfaced of Scorsese's interest, it was said Marty was considering this to be his next film, which would suggest problems have arose over his long-gestated drama Silence; €œabout two 17th century Jesuit priests who face violence and persecution when they travel to Japan to locate their mentor and to spread the gospel of Christianity€. It is an adaptation of Shusaku Endo€˜s 60€s published novel and was once spoken of to began filming early next year once lead Daniel Day-Lewis was done with Spielberg's Lincoln but from the looks of things plans may have changed. Certainly Benicio Del Toro (who was due to co-star, along with Gael Garcia Bernal) is lining up the villain role in Star Trek sequel that J.J. Abrams shoots in January, so is that project dead now?