You probably know them best as HBO's Game of Thrones showrunners, but now Fox has made a deal with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to write and direct Dirty White Boys as their first feature film. The movie would be adapted from Stephen Hunter's 1995 crime thriller novel of the same name, which follows three violent convicts who escape prison and the lone lawman who attempts to track them down. Since the duo has been rather preoccupied with Game of Thrones - which just kicked off its fourth season this past Sunday - Dirty White Boys is the first project they've signed on for together since starting to adapt the George R. R. Martin books. Hit the jump for more.
Deadline reports that Fox has signed on with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to write and direct Dirty White Boys. Here's what the duo had to say about the project's genesis:
Benioff: “We’re sitting around bullshitting and we started talking about lines we were jealous of before it came around to the familiar topic of greatest opening lines in novels. Our friend Scott Frank brought up the opening line of Dirty White Boys. To be honest, I’d never hear of the book before, even though we’d heard of Stephen Hunter’s sniper series. Scott mentioned that opening line from Dirty White Boys, and it made me go out and buy the book, and Dan bought the book, and then we got past that first line and just fell in love with it.”
Weiss: “It does grab you, the first line, and what keeps you is that the characters are so well drawn, really charismatic and awful people, so flawed. I don’t think you’ll be able to print the first line, because it’s got prison soaked racism and is just really out there.”
They haven't set to writing the first draft of the adaptation just yet, mostly since they're busy working on Game of Thrones and will be preoccupied through the show's planned seven seasons. The Dirty White Boys property has been sitting at Fox for a number of years since the studio picked up the rights not long after publication, so they don't seem to be in a hurry. As for whether Weiss and Benioff will finish their Game of Thrones adaptation for the small screen before Martin finishes the book series remains to be seen.
Here's a look at the description from Hunter's Dirty White Boys novel (via Amazon):
They busted out of McAlester State Penitentiary--three escaped convicts going to ground in a world unprepared for anything like them....
Lamar Pye is prince of the Dirty White Boys. With a lion in his soul, he roars--for he is the meanest, deadliest animal on the loose....
Odell is Lamar's cousin, a hulking manchild with unfeeling eyes. He lives for daddy Lamar. Surely he will die for him....
Richard's survival hangs on a sketch: a crude drawing of a lion and a half-naked woman. For this Lamar has let Richard live...
Armed to the teeth, Lamar and his boys have cut a path of terror across the Southwest, and pushed one good cop into a crisis of honor and conscience. Trooper Bud Pewtie should have died once at Lamar's hands. Now they're about to meet again. And this time, only one of them will walk away....