The best-selling Thailand-based novels of British author John Burdett are poised for the big screen after being snapped up by a Hollywood production company, it was reported Wednesday.
Film rights for Burdett's Bangkok 8 - featuring incorruptible hero detective Sonchai Jitleecheep - have been purchased by Millennium Films, entertainment journal Daily Variety reported.
No further details were available but director James McTeigue, who directed cult film V for Vendetta has been lined up for the movie, which may be the first in a series, Variety reported.
Burdett is a former Hong Kong-based lawyer who has forged a successful writing career. Bangkok 8 was published to acclaim in 2003 and is the first of three detective novels set in the Thai capital.
Meanwhile, Thailand has caved in to pressure from Iran and withdrawn the animated movie Persepolis, about a girl growing up and feeling repressed under Islamic rule, from next month's Bangkok International Film Festival.
"I was invited by the Iranian embassy to discuss the matter and we both came to mutual agreement that it would be beneficial to both countries if the film was not shown," festival director Chattan Kunjara Na Ayudhya said.
"It's a good film, but there are other considerations."
The film, based on the popular French comic books of Iranian director and writer Marjane Satrapi, drew complaints from the government-affiliated Iran Farabi Foundation when it was screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival in France.
In a letter published by several news organizations, the foundation said the film "presented an unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution in some of its parts."
The film follows Satrapi as a little girl watching the fall of the US-backed Shah. She and her family believe that with the Shah gone, state repression will end but the film shows that it only worsens.
Also subject to a ban this week is Tom Cruise. Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star Cruise is a Scientologist, the Defence Ministry said on Monday.
Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject.
The decision drew a sharp response from Cruise's film producing partner, Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists Entertainment, who said Cruise's "personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on the movie's plot, themes or content."
The US actor will portray Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Nazi dictator in July 1944 with a bomb hidden in a briefcase.
The film, slated for a 2008 release, will be directed by Bryan Singer and co-star Kenneth Branagh. It is called Valkyrie after Operation Valkyrie, the plot's codename.
Hollywood's shift away from celluloid continued on Tuesday as Warner Brothers Entertainment revealed its film editing and archives have gone digital.
Warner said it worked with US computer giant Hewlett-Packard to build a sophisticated digital editing "infrastructure" used to craft recently-released Oceans 13 and rejuvenate classics such as The Wizard of Oz.
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