Casting Call: The Associate
In which we suggest who should star in the next big adaptation, remake, or historical film.
After nearly a decade of practicing criminal law and serving in the House of Representatives, John Grisham turned to writing. Drawing from his past, Grisham forged his career as an author by monopolizing the legal thriller genre. His bestselling novels have proved worthy of the big screen multiple times; films such as The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, and Runaway Jury are all based on Grisham’s work. The author’s success continues with the announcement of an upcoming adaptation of his 2009 novel, The Associate. Zac Efron is set to star in and produce the film, alongside Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher of Divergent, while a writer has yet to be attached to the project.
The Associate follows the story of a graduate student at Yale Law School, Kyle McAvoy. While McAvoy is pegged as the Ivy Leaguer with limitless potential, he has a lurking secret from his undergraduate days: his fraternity brothers, Baxter Tate and Joey Bernardo, raped a woman, Elaine Keenan, while she was unconscious at a party hosted by McAvoy. The whole episode was caught on tape and when the evidence falls into the hands of mystery man Bennie Wright, he uses it to blackmail McAvoy into taking a job at a law firm where he is involved in an on-going lawsuit. McAvoy becomes a puppet for Wright and is constantly under supervision. Forced to feed Wright information about the case, McAvoy finds himself in a compromising position: a key perpetrator in a scheme that could send him to prison or ultimately have him killed.
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