HOLLYWOOD NEWS

March 20, 2008–William Monahan will writea thriller for Paramount based on an article to appear in Playboy. It's the story of a drug dealer who traded a prison sentence to go undercover at a security hospital for the criminally insane, where he tried to get a serial killer to disclose the whereabouts of his victims.

Graham King will produce with Alexandra Milchan, and the Par project kicks off a first-look deal that King's GK Films has made with Monahan, who will take an office in King's new Santa Monica HQ. Joel Gotler will be exec producer.

King was introduced to the project by Milchan, who had received a one-page proposal for the article by Jim Keene and writer Hillel Levin.

The son of a police chief, Keene was caught dealing drugs. As an alternative to a 10 years-to-life sentence, he was allowed to cozy up to a man authorities believed murdered 25 young women. Only the prison psychiatrist knew Keene was undercover, plus a visiting “girlfriend” who was actually an FBI agent.

Monahan followed “The Departed,” for which he won an Oscar, by scripting Ridley Scott's Warner thriller “Body of Lies,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. He just wrote the thriller “Nothing in the World” and recently signed to adapt the remake of hit Korean film “The Chaser” for Warner.