Ridley Scott Wants To Direct Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor

Cormac McCarthy has made waves in the movie industry over the last decade with his novels turned feature films. Now, one of Hollywood’s biggest directors, Ridley Scott, wants in.

McCarthy has penned a number of novels and has been heavily involved with the process of turning them from simply words on a page to visual masterpieces. If you’ve ever read a McCarthy book, you understand the difficulty in taking such complex manuscripts and adapting them to a limited time frame. However, that is exactly what has been done for some of his best received novels to date: No Country For Old Men, The Road, and All The Pretty Horses.

Up until now, McCarthy has let other writers take on the tedious task of translating his vision into one that is easier to re-produce on screen. With The Counselor though, McCarthy has decided to take a stab at it himself and has just submitted his first spec script, which has quickly been picked up by the producing team behind The Road.

Deadline broke the story with this statement from Steve Schwartz, one of the producers:

“Since McCarthy himself wrote the script, we get his own muscular prose directly, with its sexual obsessions. It’s a masculine world into which, unusually, two women intrude to play leading roles. McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier. This may be one of McCarthy’s most disturbing and powerful works.”

The Counselor, for those unfamiliar with it, is about a highly respected lawyer that tries his hand at the narcotics trade. Ridley Scott is currently in talks to helm the project as he’s a huge fan of the author and he has reportedly already began discussing his ideas with the author.

McCarthy generally works closely with the director and production teams on adaptations of his work, previously establishing a good relationship with the Coen Brothers. I’m sure he’ll do the same with Scott and together, I think the two can produce a very promising film.