Despite losing the opportunity to call the shots on Thor 2, acclaimed veteran television director Brian Kirk (Game of Thrones) has kept busy lining up other jobs in the meantime. Recently he signed on to direct a new film adaptation of Robert Ludlum‘s 1972 suspense novel The Osterman Weekend, from a screenplay by Simon Kinberg (X-Men: The Last Stand) and Jesse Wigutow (It Runs in the Family).

The plot of the film, according to The Playlist, “centers on John Tanner, who is told by a reporter that his friends aren’t who they say they are. The reporter then turns up dead, forcing John to go on the run and figure out the conspiracy before he winds up dead himself.” Robert Schwentke (RED) was originally slated to direct the film back in 2010, but left to make R.I.P.D. when the project stalled.

The Osterman Weekend was first adapted for the big screen back in 1983 by legendary filmmaker Sam Peckinpah (The Wild Bunch) and starred Rutger Hauer, Craig T. Nelson, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, John Hurt, and the late Burt Lancaster and Dennis Hopper. While not packing in the action and thrills you would expect from a Ludlum potboiler the movie was still a shrewd and satirical rip on Reagan-era Cold War paranoia and gave the world of cinema the indelible visual of Meg Foster wielding a crossbow that would be the central image of the marketing campaign. The film would be Peckinpah’s last as he passed away the following year.

I expect the makers of this new Osterman Weekend will amp up the thrills quotient of the story a la the Ludlum-inspired Bourne franchise. Kirk is a very capable orchestrator of action sequences and he would have made a great fit for a Thor sequel, but a Ludlum adaptation can be a lucrative opportunity for the director to see his clout rise in the filmmaking community if he can make The Osterman Weekend a dynamic piece of entertainment.

[Source: The Playlist]