The ten people who saw Henry Poole Is Here can say what they will about it — thin, contrived, racist against perfectly legitimate miraculous images of Jesus — but the film at least had a point of view. An ethos*. It’s hard to imagine what Mark Pellington will do with a story featuring “a doctor with psychic powers who is enlisted by the police to track a serial killer” besides cast Ashley Judd and/or Morgan Freeman and/or Sam Jackson. Maybe he can have Freeman’s auto wreck injuries healed with grafts from Jackson, making a sort of thriller policeman super-actor.
Oh, the name of the film. It’s Solace, to be written, per Variety, by Sean Bailey and Ted Griffin with revisions by Jamie Vanderbilt. I hope the future tense in Variey’s reporting isn’t a mistake, because the notion that studios have rewriters hired and waiting in the wings even before the primaries turn in a draft is such a wonderful thing.
*As did U2 3D, which I remain irritated with myself for missing in theatres.