James Bond and Jason Bourne may have some competition in the spy game.  Deadline reports that Universal has picked up Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon novels for a potential new spy franchise.  Allon is a semi-retired Mossad agent that killed six of the Munich terrorists and makes his living restoring art and taking the occasional Israeli spy assignment, because if there's a job worth outsourcing, it's intelligence gathering.  Former NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker will serve as the film's producer.  The studio is currently looking for a screenwriter but they're still deciding which of the ten Allon novels will be adapted first (the first one published was 2002's The Kill Artist).

Hit the jump for a synopsis of The Kill Artist.

Here's the official synopsis for The Kill Artist:

Gabriel Allon was a key operative in secret Israeli-intelligence missions.  When his wife and daughter fell victim to the danger that accompanied him everywhere, Gabriel quit and devoted himself to the work of art restoration-- previously a cover for his secret missions.  But now Ari Shamron, the head of Israeli intelligence, needs Gabriel's particular kind of experience to thwart a Palestinian plot to destroy the peace negotiations in the Middle East.  The architect of this plot, a Palestinian zealot named Tariq, is a lethal part of Gabriel's past, and so as the two begin an intercontinental game of hide-and-seek, with life and death as the prizes, the motives are as personal as they are political.  The story, by an author who was praised by Newsday for "Bringing new life to the international thriller," features a colorful supporting cast-- including the Magus-like Shamron, a beautiful French-Jewish model who is seeking retribution for her family's death in the Holocaust, and a marvelously comic down-at-the-heels London art dealer.  And it includes fascinating background detail about the Palestinian situation and the cutthroat art world.  All of these elements add up to a smart and electrically exciting international thriller. [Amazon]

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