Ben Jacoby Adapting Thomas Ray Novella ‘Silencer’ For Paramount

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to Thomas Ray’s novella, Silencer, enlisting Ben Jacoby (The First Omen) to adapt it for the big screen.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura will produce as part of his first-look deal with the studio alongside NeoText Corporation, the publisher of the novella. Russell Ackerman, John Schoenfelder, and Jay Schuminsky will produce for NeoText, with Greg Cohen overseeing development for di Bonaventura Pictures.

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The story follows a CIA field agent who is sent to bring in the ultimate CIA target who’s been out in the cold for decades. An operative who dates back to the dark times of MK Ultra, the target is a silencer — someone who can read minds, and wipe them from a distance, making him impossible to find or catch.

Alongside Chase Palmer, Jacoby is co-writer on The Whisper Man, Netflix and AGBO’s adaptation of the novel by Alex North, which has been greenlighted at Netflix with Robert De Niro on board to star, as we were first to report. Previously, the scribe has penned 20th’s The First Omen, produced by David S. Goyer, as well as Flash Boys, an adaptation of the New York bestseller from The Big Short‘s Michael Lewis for Netflix. Simu Liu is attached in the lead role of Brad Katsuyama, who blew the whistle on high-tech corruption in the financial industry, with Anthony Bregman set to produce. Jacoby also scripted To Catch a Killer, a crime thriller for director Damián Szifron & FilmNation that starred Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendelsohn.

A writer with a background intersecting with U.S. intelligence and military branches, Ray is also responsible for works like The Spy Without a Country and The Blackbird.

NeoText recently sold “H.A.V.E.N.” to Sony Pictures with Carter Blanchard set to adapt his sci-fi short story, described as Men in Black meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The company also recently sold a pair of projects to Amazon: an adaptation of the short story “American Criminal,” which Gavin O’Connor will direct and produce alongside Hidden Pictures, as well as a take on novella “D.N.A.” backed by Simon Kinberg’s Genre Films. Ackerman and Schoenfelder are also exec producers on the upcoming Netflix film The Electric State directed by the Russo Brothers, as well as They Will Kill You, directed by Kirill Sokolov for Nocturna, Skydance Entertainment, and New Line.

Jacoby is repped by Verve, Lit Entertainment Group, and Ginsburg Daniels Kallis. Neotext is also repped by Lit Entertainment Group.

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