After a decade of saying no, John Grisham has made a movie deal for his 1999 bestselling novel “The Testament,” reports Variety.
Producers Mark Johnson and Hunt Lowry are teaming with 821 Entertainment Group to option the book, with 821’s Eric Geadelmann and Ben Horton taking executive producer credit.
In the novel, a billionaire defies his greedy relatives and leaves his $11 billion fortune to a mysterious illegitimate daughter doing charity work in the Brazilian wetlands. A down-and-out lawyer helps her battle her relatives over the fortune.
“The Testament” becomes one of several Grisham legal thrillers headed for the screen. An adaptation of Grisham’s nonfiction novel “The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town” moved from defunct Warner Independent Pictures to Warner Bros., with Smokehouse partners George Clooney and Grant Heslov (the picture is stalled pending a lawsuit filed by a subject in the book). Phoenix Pictures continues to forge ahead on “Playing for Pizza,” with a script by J. Mills Goodloe and Adam Shankman directing; and Paramount is developing “The Associate” with Shia LaBeouf and producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura.
