William Monahan Adapting John Grisham for Shia LaBeouf

I can buy into this...

By: Brad Brevet
Published: Tuesday, February 17th 2009 at 3:27 AM

Of all the John Grisham film adaptations A Time to Kill remains my favorite, The Client was pretty good, The Rainmaker was okay, The Chamber entertained for about a minute as did The Runaway Jury, The Pelican Brief I can't even remember and The Firm I did not like at all. Of that bunch I only read "The Firm" and when it disappointed me sorely I never picked up another Grisham until about five years ago when I read "The Partner" and "The Street Lawyer" but I never picked up "The Associate" but that appears to be the next Grisham novel to be getting a feature film treatment.

Variety reports Paramount has brought on The Departed scripter William Monahan to pen the screenplay with an eye for Shia LaBeouf to star. As I am sure many online LaBeouf haters will scoff at the idea, but I can definitely buy into the idea of Shia in a legal thriller. He is able to deliver wit and well-written dialogue very well and a Grisham novel seems right up his alley.

The official description of the book reads as follows:

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father’s small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn’t want–even though it’s a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains–from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle’s “cubicle” at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country.

Yeah, it's generic Grisham and Grisham never did appeal to me all that much as an author, but legal thrillers always have the potential to entertain and with Shia aboard I am more than open to this one. Anything to stave off Transformers 3 is a plus in my book. It'll be interesting to see who they get in the director's chair.

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