As much as I’d love for Scorsese’s follow up to Hugo to be another family film about kids that have to fight off an evil abominable snow-person, Marty’s The Snowman will not be that. Not at all. Instead it sounds like a bit like he’s pulling a Fincher and picking out a nice rote European crime novel (from Norway) with some inexplicably huge international success to churn out his own sophisticated crime flick.

The seventh book in Jo Nesbø’s “Harry Hole” series (heh heh, holenesbo…), the book tells the story of a serial killer that exclusively kills married women with only one child, and does so across many winters. Each murder occurs once snow has fallen and is marked by ominous snowmen left standing outside of the homes. Gruff alcoholic detective Harry Hole is turned on to the investigation which twists and turns as one would expect, meanwhile he’s banging another detective with whom he has some history.

If the the synopsis I read of the full plot is any indication, this book is precisely like every other later-number serialized beach-read detective novel ever written. Somehow though, the series is extremely popular in Norway and film adaptation of another one of Nesbo’s books is currently enjoying unprecedented success at the Norwegian box office. The Snowman will be adapted from the novel by Matthew Michael Carnahan who is coming off of World War Z, but is known for the more politcally-minded State Of Play and The Kingdom. I hope he has some lead on how to make this story not completely routine and, more importantly, worthy of Scorsese’s time. The director remains a spry and vibrant gentleman of course, but he did just turn 69 last week after all.

I’m really not seeing it with this project, but I trust that Marty wouldn’t sign onto something he didn’t have an interesting vision for, so I’ll just keep it to myself until we hear more. If Hugo is as special as I’ve heard though (and I find out tonight), then the bar will be even higher for the master filmmaker.

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Source | THR (via Dark Horizons)