This sounds like something I’m going to want to read before seeing a film adaptation of it as Deadline.com announces Warner Bros. has acquired the rights to Don Winslow‘s novel “[amazon asin=”0446561924″ text=”Satori”]” with Shane Salerno (Oliver Stone’s Savages and AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem) penning the script for Leonardo DiCaprio to star. Yes, the reason I will probably want to read the book is because Salerno wrote the script, though Oliver Stone’s Savages, based on another novel [amazon asin=”1439183376″ text=”written by Winslow”], may shine a different light on the screenwriter who also co-wrote Michael Bay’s Armageddon and three episodes of the new “Hawaii Five-0” television series.
The book’s synopsis reads as follows with DiCaprio attached to play Nicholai Hel:
Prepare to meet the world’s most dangerous man…
Nicholai Hel – genius, mystic, and the perfect, formidable assassin – was first introduced to readers in Shibumi, the classic #1 bestseller by master storyteller Trevanian. Now critically acclaimed author Don Winslow continues Hel’s story for the first time in this all-new, blockbuster thriller.
SATORI
It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu, or “naked kill,” is fluent in seven languages, and has honed extraordinary “proximity sense”-an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world’s most fearsome assassin and now the CIA needs him.
The Americans offer Hel freedom, money, and a neutral passport in exchange for one small service: to go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union’s commissioner to China. It’s almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori-the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.
Should this film get the green light it will be just one more high profile picture in a long line of them for DiCaprio who will next be seen in Clint Eastwood’s J. Edgar. He is currently shooting The Great Gatsby for Baz Luhrmann and will then move to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and this is all coming off the success of Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Talk about a run.
