Summit Entertainment reports that writer Jesse Wigutow ("It Runs in the Family") will draft a screenplay for a new movie adaptation of author Robert Ludlum's "The Osterman Weekend".
The original "Osterman Weekend" feature based on the novel, with a music soundtrack by Lalo Schifrin, was released in 1983, starring Rutger Hauer, John Hurt and Burt Lancaster, directed by "Bloody" Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch").
Published in 1972, "The Osterman Weekend" was Ludlum's second book in print, following 'John Tanner', a host of an investigative news show, who is convinced by a CIA agent that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy, called 'Omega', that threatens national security.
Everything Tanner thinks he knows about his closest friends is overturned and when Omega finally reveals itself, Tanner realizes he has been duped and manipulated from the very start.
Peckinpah's "Osterman Weekend", the final film before his death in 1984, begins with CIA director 'Maxwell Danforth' (Burt Lancaster) watching a filmed recording of agent 'Laurence Fassett' (Hurt) and his wife making love.
When Fassett goes to take a shower, two assassins enter the bedroom and kill his wife. The agent, unaware of his employer’s involvement, goes almost insane with grief and rage and begins to hunt down the assassins, eventually uncovering the Soviet spy network 'Omega'.
Fassett is called into the director’s office, wanting to turn some of Omega’s agents to the side of the West. He has the perfect opportunity in 'John Tanner' (Hauer), a controversial television journalist, highly critical of government abuses of power.
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