Poor Brian De Palma.
Last November, we reported that the veteran director had finally found a proper followup to 2012’s Passion with the Chinese thriller, Lights Out. Well, apparently he’s still tinkering that script*, and in the meantime has since moved on to an adaptation of Sascha Arango’s 2015 best-selling novel, The Truth And Other Lies.
As Deadline reports, Chockstone Pictures and Nick Wechsler Productions optioned the award-winning novel, and De Palma has signed on to direct what’s reportedly a black comedy. Arango even adapted the thing himself for the silver screen.
Here’s the book’s synopsis:
Henry Hayden seems like someone you might admire, or even come to think of as a friend. A famous bestselling author. A loving and devoted husband. A generous and considerate neighbor. But Henry Hayden is a construction, a mask. His past is a secret, his methods more so. Only he and his wife know that she is the actual writer of the novels that made him famous.
When his hidden-in-plain-sight mistress becomes pregnant, it seems his carefully conceived façade is about to crumble. And on a rain-soaked night at the edge of a dangerous cliff, his permanent solution becomes his most terrible mistake.
Now not only are the police after Henry but his past — which he has painstakingly kept hidden — threatens to catch up with him as well. Henry is an ingenious man, and he works out an ingenious plan, weaving lies, truths, and half-truths into a story that might help him survive. Still, the noose tightens.
“I have tried to portray Henry Hayden as a human product of modern meritocracy, where the individual is no longer defined by moral integrity, but by power and success,” Arango explained. “In the Facebook era, the original becomes indistinguishable from fake. Success replaces faith and becomes religion.”
Steve Schwartz, Roger Schwartz, Paula Mae Schwartz, and Nick Wechsler will produce. Here’s hoping this, too, doesn’t fall wayside, but since it’s not a comic book, or a sequel, or a remake, who the hell even knows anymore.
It’s Wednesday, right?
* Hat tip to Geoff for the Lights Out update.
