Film version of Entering Hades moving into production

Few debut titles make the noise that John Leake's Entering Hades (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Sarah Crichton Books) made when it launched last fall.

Thanks in large part to the PR team at FSG, the book received great reviews from Entertainment Weekly, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and many others. It was also named one of the best books of 2007 by Men's Vogue. Leake was featured at the Texas Book Festival and did numerous interviews about the book when it launched last fall. It was one of our lead fall titles.

Variety is reporting this morning that Warnes Bros. is "hot for Leake's Entering Hades." Here is Michael Fleming's article:

"Warner Bros. has acquired the John Leake book "Entering Hades" and has attached Robert Schwentke to direct the adaptation.

The book, published late last year by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, is about Jack Unterweger, a journalist who led a double life strangling prostitutes in Vienna and Los Angeles, and covering his own crimes in the early 1990s. Unterweger hanged himself after receiving a life sentence.

Bob Cooper and Richard Saperstein will produce through their Landscape Entertainment and Elysium Films banners. Shara Kay will be executive producer.

"Robert, Richard and I want to do a movie that is more than a dark serial killer story," Cooper said. "This is about the power of celebrity, and what happens when this sociopath goes to Los Angeles, a city that is the prototype for reinvention."

Schwentke's latest film, "The Time Traveler's Wife," will be distributed by WB in 2009."

The book has had an ironic connection to Hollywood from the start, as the focus of Leake's work, Austrian serial killer and author Jack Unterweger, spent some time in Los Angeles shopping his manuscripts to producers in between killing women and interviewing LAPD officers.

He was firmly convinced his work should be on the silver screen.

Despite his flamboyant outfits, charisma and determination, Jack never inked a film deal in America. Something tells me he'd be ever so pleased that John Leake did.