Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: John Grisham’s The Firm might finally become a TV firmseries nearly two decades after the novel made its author a household name. E1 Entertainment has been shopping a spec pilot script by Lukas Reiter, a series adaptation of the popular legal thriller, which was the base for Sydney Pollack’s 1993 movie starring Tom Cruise. Reiter originally developed The Firm for CBS a couple of years ago when the project didn’t go to pilot. He has since written a new version of the script, which is being targeted primarily for cable. Grisham has been very involved in the project, which has been pitched to a number of cable networks, including FX, TNT and A&E, as well as to NBC and Fox. There is already interest from at least one cable net. Reiter and Grisham are executive producing.

A series adaptation of Grisham’s novel The Client had a one-season run on CBS in 1995. In 2003, ABC shot a pilot based on another Grisham novel, The Street Lawyer. E1 recently successfully shopped another series adaptation of a bestseller, Stephen King’s The Colorado Kid, which became SyFy’s upcoming series Haven.

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