New York, NY – Jean Doumanian Productions, producers of August Osage County, will produce the upcoming film adaptation of Nic Pizzolatto’s acclaimed novel Gavelston, featuring a screenplay adapted by Pizzolatto himself. Janus Metz is set to direct. Matthias Schoenaerts, who starred in Bullhead and in Rust and Bone (for which he won the 2012 Cesar Award for Most Promising Actor), will lead the cast as "Roy." (The character of "Rocky," the female lead, has yet to be cast.) Shooting is planned to commence in Spring, 2014.
Pizzolatto created, wrote and serves as Executive Producer on the highly acclaimed new HBO series “True Detective,” starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, which premiered Sunday night as HBO's strongest rated series opener in years. Galveston, his first novel, was a finalist for the Barnes and Noble 2010 Discover Award and the Edgar Award for best first novel; it won the Spur Award, and received the Prix de Premier Roman L'Etranger for best first novel (foreign) from the French Academy. Variety recently named him one of Ten writers to watch.
In his New York Times review of the novel, literary critic and author Dennis Lehane said, “Galveston, in its authenticity and fearless humanism, recalls only the finest examples of the form: Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past and David Goodis’s Down There, Carl Franklin’s One False Move and James Ellroy’s Black Dahlia. It’s an elegy to the broken and the never-weres, to those who got themselves lost so that someone — anyone — might come looking"
Janus Metz is the director of Armadillo, the first documentary ever chosen to compete in the International Critics' Week at Cannes (where it won the Grand Prize). Armadillo follows a platoon of Danish soldiers on a six-month tour of Afghanistan in 2009. An intimate, visually stunning account of both the horror and growing cynicism of modern warfare, the film premiered at the top of the box office in Denmark, provoking a national debate over government policy and the rules of engagement.
Galveston will be produced by Jean Doumanian and Patrick Daly. London’s Embankment Films handle international sales. Casting by Barden/Schnee Casting.