(Left) Matthew McConaughey in season 1 of ‘True Detective’. Photo: HBO. (Right) Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer in ‘Mike Hammer, Private Eye’. Photo: The Kushner-Locke Company.
Preview:
- Matthew McConaughey is in talks to play Mike Hammer.
- ‘True Detective’s Nic Pizzolatto will write the script.
- It’ll be based on Mickey Spillane’s and Max Allan Collins’ Mike Hammer franchise.
Having worked together on the first season of iconic TV series ‘True Detective,’ actor Matthew McConaughey and writer/producer Nic Pizzolatto are looking to reunite for a new crime story.
According to Deadline, McConaughey is in talks to star in a new adaptation of the Mike Hammer detective novels, with Pizzolatto writing the script.
“The truth lies in the dark.”
Skydance acquired the rights to Mickey Spillane’s and Max Allan Collins’ Hammer franchise with plans to develop and produce the bestselling book series into a movie
Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Don Granger will produce along with Entertainment 360’s Guymon Casady.
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Who is Mike Hammer?
Stacy Keach as Mike Hammer in ‘Mike Hammer, Private Eye’. Photo: The Kushner-Locke Company.
Mike Hammer as a character was created by the American author Spillane.
He debuted in the 1947 book ‘I, the Jury’ as a no-holds-barred private investigator whose love for his secretary Velda is outweighed only by his willingness to kill a killer.
Hammer’s best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of NYPD Homicide, and the ‘tec was a World War II army veteran who spent two years fighting jungle warfare in the Pacific Ocean theater against Japan.
With more than 250 million copies of Hammer books sold globally, it often is recognized as the most popular American mystery/thriller series of all time. Hammer is credited with inspiring numerous other characters including Dirty Harry, Jack Reacher and James Bond, who Ian Fleming famously referred to as “the British answer to Mike Hammer.”
The character has been portrayed numerous times in radio and on both TV and movie screens, including by Stacy Keach, Armand Assante and Darren McGavin.
There were also comic books, and Collins took over writing the character in 2008 with the series of novels ending this year.
Hammer has not had a chance for any feature film treatment thanks to a long-winded rights dispute. Spillane passed away in 2006, one month after the death of his manager Jay Bernstein. Bernstein’s estate claimed ownership of the character. Ken F. Levin spent several years in court before the rights came back to the author’s estate and a clear title could be delivered for a movie deal.
What else has Matthew McConaughey been working on?
Matthew McConaughey in season 1 of ‘True Detective’. Photo: HBO.
McConaughey’s movie career has been a little quieter of late –– he hasn’t appeared on the big screen in person since 2019’s crime caper ‘The Gentlemen.’ He did, however, lend his voice to animated sequel ‘Sing 2’ (2021) and the various short films around it.
The actor was also the voice of Cowboypool in ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’.
And this year will see him starring in two films –– Apple Original Film’s ‘The Lost Bus,’ about a bus driver who helped to rescue stranded kids during the 2018 Camp Fire in California.
His other most recent movie, ‘The Rivals of Amziah King,’ which sees him playing a foster parent reuniting with one of his former charges, debuted at the SXSW Film Festival this past March.
Finally, there is the planned reunion with ‘True Detective’ co-star Woody Harrelson –– he played detective Marty Hart to McConaughey’s detective Rust Cohle –– in a new Apple TV+ series which will see the old friends playing brothers.
Reuniting with Pizzolatto, who created the much-talked about first season of ‘True Detective’, makes sense, and there’s a chance Pizzolatto could return to that world, since the actors have expressed a desire to revisit the roles.
Here’s what he told Deadline:
“I actually have another story for Cohle and Hart that, who knows, maybe we’ll do it one day,” he began, adding that he didn’t feel beholden to continuing the inaugural season’s storyline: “But no, there is pressure, but I don’t really feel or respond to pressure that way. I get pressure [from] myself and beyond that it doesn’t exist so much for me and pressure tends to more revolve around, am I discharging my duty correctly for me?”
When will the Mike Hammer movie investigate the inside of theaters?
With no director attached yet, and no actual distributor (though Skydance may well release it via Paramount Pictures if its merger goes through), there’s zero sign of a release date at this point.
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