Johnny Depp to Make Film About Poisoned Ex-Spy
Johnny Depp is making a film about a former Russian spy whose poisoning death in London has touched off an international mystery, the trade magazine Variety reported.
Warner Bros. has bought the rights to a book about Alexander Litvinenko for Depp's production company, Infinitum Nihil, the magazine reported Friday. Depp will produce the film and could star in it, the report said.
Warner Bros. is racing against director Michael Mann and Colombia Pictures, which has agreed to pay $1.5 million for the rights to another book being co-written by the former spy's widow Marina Litvinenko, and Alex Goldfarb, a close friend, Variety reported later on its Web site. The book is expected to be published in May by Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint, the report said.
Warner Bros. had tried unsuccessfully to buy the rights to the book by Litvinenko's widow, the report said. The studio has acquired the rights to a book by New York Times journalist Alan Cowell, which is expected to be published next year by Doubleday.
Litvinenko was an agent in the Russian Federal Security Service, the agency that replaced the KGB. After breaking with the agency he was granted asylum in Britain, where he became a fierce Kremlin critic and wrote a book claiming that the FSB had bombed apartment buildings in 1999 to blame the blasts on Chechen separatists and create a pretext for resuming the war in Chechnya.
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