Tom Holland Engaged In John Grisham’s ‘The Partner’ At Universal; Graham Moore Adapting

EXCLUSIVE: Tom Holland has made a deal to star in and produce The Partner, a drama based on the John Grisham 1997 bestseller that The Imitation Game’s Graham Moore is scripting for Universal.

The novel was written by Grisham at a time he was getting as much as $8 million for movie rights to compulsively readable thrillers that made strong vehicles for stars and directors. That included putting Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock and Sam Jackson on fast tracks in A Time To Kill, along with Tom Cruise (The Firm), Matt Damon and Claire Danes (The Rainmaker), Tommy Lee Jones and Susan Sarandon (The Client), Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts (The Pelican Brief), and John Cusack, Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz in The Runaway Jury.

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Holland will see if there’s still some gold in Grisham’s lawyers-in-distress sagas. After completing a year-long hiatus from acting following his grueling turn as a multiple personality-sufferer in the series The Crowded Room, Holland’s dance card filled up quickly. He’s the lead in Universal’s The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer follow-up that also stars Zendaya, Matt Damon, Rob Pattinson, Anne Hathaway, Lupita Nyong’o and Charlize Theron. Holland is starring in his fourth Spider-Man film, and likely bringing his wall crawler to the two Avengers films that Joe & Anthony Russo are making.

The Partner gives him the opportunity to play a less sympathetic character, a route he took in Cherry and The Crowded Room. The protagonist is Patrick Lanigan, a young partner in a white shoe Biloxi law firm who fakes his own death in a burning car. He’s left behind a wife, newborn daughter, and a secret. What he’s actually done is fake his death to create a template for a new life by stealing $90 million from a client of his crooked law firm. He finds happiness and love in South America. When the client who worked so hard to defraud the government finds the money is missing from his offshore accounts, he becomes determined to hunt down the lawyer he doesn’t believe is dead. That leads the attorney to have to turn himself in to the FBI and face up to the wife, child and life he left behind.

The Partner was once set up to be John Lee Hancock’s follow-up to The Blind Side at New Regency, which made A Time To Kill, The Client and The Runaway Jury. It stalled and the rights eventually came free. Rideback bought them, and set up the project at Universal. Holland just set up a new production label, Billy17, along with brother Harry Holland and Will South, and they’re joining Rideback as producers.

Holland is repped by WME, Moore by CAA and Grisham by The Gernert Company’s David Gernert.

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