Warners Picks Up the Great 'Carter Beats the Devil'

Here's fantastic news: Warner Bros. is going to make a movie out of Glen David Gold's exceptionally exceptional novel Carter Beast the Devil. Film School Rejects got it straight from the author, so that's a pretty good source. "Warner Brothers just optioned Carter this afternoon," wrote Gold. "And yes, that’s something you can talk about. Let’s keep fingers crossed." It's a fantastic story about a magician in the early 20th century who is suspected of killing President Warren Harding hours after the prez was the subject of one of the performer's illusions. It's a terrific plot, one that's got too much to go into here, and that could be the only drawback: Carter Beats the Devil is a big book, so slicing roughly four-fifths of the page count out for a movie script will be a delicate undertaking. Some books lend themselves better to film adaptations than others, and while Carter is an extremely cinematic book, it's so loaded with stuff that it will be difficult to keep all the good elements intact. That's not to say that I mind them trying, or that it's impossible, just that it may be cut quite a bit. I don't know if the book's been optioned before now, but it came out almost a decade ago and options happen all the time without anything following them up. But I recommend the book and if they get the right people in place and find a way to keep what's truly special about Gold's debut novel while making only those alterations that are absolutely essential, then this could be a wonderful film.

Comments

[Carv]

I love that book, as you know. So good. And Carter might actually be a good fit for Tom Cruise, who was eying it at one point.