Amazon Studios just signed on to produce a movie version of Olen Steinhauer’s Kirkus-starred 2015 spy thriller, All the Old Knives, with Wonder Woman’s Chris Pine and Westworld’s Thandie Newton set to star, according to Deadline. Steinhauer has adapted his own book for the screen. No prospective release date was announced at this early stage.
The film has been in development since at least 2017, when Variety reported that Pine and Golden Globe winner Michelle Williams would headline the film; Williams appears to be no longer involved.
In the novel, CIA agent Henry Pelham is investigating a disastrous event, codenamed “Flughafen” (“airport” in German), which involved the agency’s Vienna office. Five years earlier in that city, Islamist extremists hijacked a plane on which a CIA operative was a passenger. The investigation leads Pelham to his former lover, ex-agent Celia Harrison, and the narrative alternates between both characters’ past and present. “It’s an understatement to say that nothing is as it seems,” wrote Kirkus’ reviewer, “but even readers well-versed in espionage fiction will be pleasantly surprised by Steinhauer's plot twists and double backs.”
Steinhauer created the Epix TV series Berlin Station, which was also about CIA agents; it ran for three seasons before being canceled last year.
Pine is best known for playing Steve Trevor in 2017’s Wonder Woman and Capt. James T. Kirk in three Star Trek films; he also appeared in the 2017 film adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s classic 1962 YA novel, A Wrinkle in Time. Newton won an Emmy in 2018 for her performance as android Maeve Millay in the HBO series Westworld; she was recently nominated for another Emmy for the same role. In 1998, she played the title role in the movie version of Toni Morrison’s 1987 bestseller, Beloved.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.