PHOEBE GALLAGHER
Daniel Espinosa (”Safe House”) is in talks to direct a feature film version of the Tom Rob Smith novel “Child 44”, says Deadline.
“44” is the first in a series of three books; “Color of Money” scribe Richard Price has adapted this first one.
The central figure is Leo Demidov, a disgraced lawman in Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, who is assigned to investigate a series of gruesome child murders. The book is based on the Rostov Ripper, the Ukrainian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo, who was executed for 52 murders and was enabled by the institutional denial that existed in Soviet political culture at the time.
Ridley Scott, at one time set to direct, is producing.
