There’s a movin’ and a shakin’ about the Fox Lot as new producer Peter Chernin is lighting fires under various asses. One of the projects that he’s shoved his puppeteer hand inside of is The Deep Blue Good-Bye, the first of the Trav McGee novels. While I was certainly aware of their existence, the McGee novels are not something I’m intimately familiar with. The more I look into them though, the premise and history of the series seems strong. Leonoardo DiCaprio, who is attached to star (eventually?), would not be wasting his considerable talents if a decent script comes out of it.
For those unfamiliar, Trav McGee is the pseudo-detective protagonist of 21 novels written from the 60s through the 80s by John D. MacDonald. Each piece of the series has a color in the title, and followsx McGee on his efforts as a “salvage consultant” -which means he helps people find shit and charges them half the value. The book is known for it’s quirkier features- the houseboat McGee resides on, his tendency to get wrapped up with a bizarre rogues gallery of villains, and the darker prices that McGee often pays for his triumphs.
The most interesting characteristic of the book (and the most likely to get lost in film translation) is how the books apparently act as time capsules of the various decades in which they were released. The era from Kennedy to Reagan is one of the more interesting in American history, and if a real franchise is to emerge, how interesting would it be for them to have a progressively evolving backdrop of these American ages? More likely we will get a fun quirky and sequel-ready vehicle for a charismatic star, but one can hope.
It is unclear what priority this project has among DiCaprio’s eleventy-goddamn-billion in-development productions.
Source | Variety