According to reports, Universal Pictures and Strike Entertainment have signed actor Clive Owen to resurrect author Raymond Chandler's private eye 'Philip Marlowe' in a new feature film franchise deal. The character has previously been played by Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, James Garner, Robert Mitchum and Elliot Gould.
Strike and Phil Clymer at U.K.-based Chorion will obtain rights to Chandler's "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell My Lovely."
Strike's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman will produce the film, with Owen exec producing.
Impressed by Owen's performnance/voice over narration in "Sin City", the plan is to keep the stories set in 1940's Los Angeles, with Marlowe playing a hard-drinking, wisecracking 'gumshoe'. 
