The Wrap: Lee Child and Douglas Preston

From The Wrap:

Michael Bay to Produce 'Gideon's Sword' for Paramount

By Jeff Sneider
Published: May 24, 2010
Best-selling horror/thriller authors Lee Child and Douglas Preston have teamed for a new series that will follow investigator Gideon Crew, and Paramount has optioned the first novel, "Gideon's Sword," for Michael Bay to produce through his company Bay Films, reports Variety.

While Grand Central Publishing isn't releasing any details yet, they must be pretty juicy to be worth the reported seven-figures the two writers earned for their efforts.

I'm an avid fan of crime stories and mystery novels, preferring James Patterson's Alex Cross series (which Paramout is familiar with having released "Kiss the Girls and "Along Came a Spider") and Jeffery Deaver's Lincoln Rhyme series myself, but I've heard good things about Child, and plan to pick up "Gideon's Sword" when it hits bookshelves in February.

The story is apparently a spin-off from Child and Preston's popular FBI Agent Pendergast series, which features the brash, young upstart Crew, who Grand Central Publishing executive editor Jaime Levine said "deserves his own series."

It's encouraging to see that Bay and the studio felt the same way, as it could provide a nice change of pace from their usual action-packed blockbusters.

The duo's initial collaboration, "Relic," was adapted as a fun but forgettable 1997 movie starring Penelope Ann Miller and Tom Sizemore. Their last book, "Fever Dream," debuted at No. 3 on the New York Times bestseller list when it debuted earlier this month, which is business as usual for Child and Preston, who count 13 N.Y. Times bestsellers among them.

Additionally, Tom Cruise is developing a big-screen adaptation of Preston's nonfiction book "The Monster of Florence."

Bay is currently recasting Megan Fox's role in Paramount's "Transformers 3," which will assault theaters on July 1, 2011. He's also producing DreamWorks' big-screen adaptation of 'Pittacus Lore's' "I Am Number Four," which D.J. Caruso is directing with Alex Pettyfer and Timothy Olyphant starring.

Bay and the authors are represented by WME.