David Mamet To Write James Mangold’s Cop Drama 'The Force'

Fresh off of his recent success with “Logan,” director James Mangold lined up an adaptation of Don Winslow’s (“Savages”) NYPD corruption novel “The Force.” Now, Deadline reports, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Mamet is in talks to write the adaptation.

The novel, which was just released yesterday, explores a corrupt cop in an elite unit who is being investigated by the feds. Read the full synopsis below:

Detective sergeant Denny Malone leads an elite unit to fight gangs, drugs and guns in New York. For eighteen years he’s been on the front lines, doing whatever it takes to survive in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean. What only a few know is that Denny Malone himself is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash. Now he’s caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk a thin line of betrayal, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

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While it doesn’t sound like the most original story, Winslow’s novel did get rave reviews, including one by the New York Times’ Janet Maslin, who said the novel is “a stunner of a cop novel with dialogue, gritty New York setting and more pincers all in the service of a devastating plot.”

Mangold has always been a director who has easily switched between genres, but he looks to be returning to the one that made him a must-see director in the late ’90s with “Cop Land.” That film, like Winslow’s novel, dealt with NYPD corruption (and gave Sylvester Stallone perhaps his most nuanced role).

David Mamet hasn’t had a project produced for the big screen in a number of years, with his last theatrical release being the under-appreciated 2009 film “Redbelt.” He also wrote and directed the 2013 HBO film “Phil Spector.” Mamet, however, has kept busy in the theater, with his newest play “The Penitent” running earlier this year. It’s an exciting match-up of writer and director, but, before “The Force” can get started, it will need to wait for Mangold to get through his remake of “Disorder,” which will start filming by the end of the year.