Yesterday, it was confirmed by Deadline that Scott Frank (Get Shorty, The Queen’s Gambit, Out of Sight, Logan, Godless) will indeed be moving forward with his Sam Spade series. The project is featuring Oscar nominee Clive Owen (Children of Men, Closer, The Knick) as the hard-boiled private detective best know from the classic noir film The Maltese Falcon.
The series will be titled Monsieur Spade and primarily be shot in France with Scott directing all the episodes. They’ve also hired Tom Fontana (City On The Hill), who will co-write with Frank. They also mention French will be predominantly spoken which would sense given the show’s setting.
We’ll be seeing Spade (Owen) later in life living in the South of France in 1963.
Co-written by Frank and Fontana and to be directed by Frank, Monsieur Spade centers around writer Dashiell Hammett’s great detective, Sam Spade, played by Owen, who has been quietly living out his golden years in the small town of Bozuls in the South of France. It’s 1963, the Algerian War has just ended, and in a very short time, so, too, will Spade’s tranquility.
The project has landed at French production company Haut et Court (The Young Pope) but they’re still seeking a home for Monsieur Spade, but it’s worth pointing out Frank has had some success at Netflix with his series Godless and The Queen’s Gambit. It wouldn’t be terribly shocking if the streaming giant attempted to swoop-up the crime thriller. However, I wouldn’t rule-out HBO/HBO Max given Haut’s relationship with The Young Pope.
Late last year, Frank dished about the project to The Watch podcast revealing he was keen to get Clive Owen in the role along with mentioning they were going to be targeting six episodes. We now know those episodes will be an hour each.
FRANK: “What if you do Sam Spade later in life and he’s 60’s years old?. He’s now an ex-pat living in the South of France. His past comes to his past and finds him in this small town. It’s going to be a six-episode series with Clive Owen.”
THE MALTESE FALCON: In this noir classic, detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) gets more than he bargained for when he takes a case brought to him by a beautiful but secretive woman (Mary Astor). As soon as Miss Wonderly shows up, trouble follows as Sam’s partner is murdered and Sam is accosted by a man (Peter Lorre) demanding he locate a valuable statuette. Sam, entangled in a dangerous web of crime and intrigue, soon realizes he must find the one thing they all seem to want: the bejeweled Maltese falcon.
SOURCE: DEADLINE
THE RONIN 