Alan McElroy Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that this new project was probably picked up, at least in part, due to Dexter. Once you get a sympathetic serial killer, born out of a bloody mess, trying to feel love and making sure he only kills bad guys -- the floodgates are open so that emotion and romance can flow more readily into dark and dirty killing. The Hollywood Reporter has posted that Fox is the victor in the bidding war over a spec script by Alan McElroy called Man and Wife.

An action thriller, not much is being said about the script other than that it focuses on "a professional killer who is forced to pretend to be an ordinary husband, and the wife who learns to love her husband in a totally unexpected way." That definitely sounds like she gets into the killing frame of mind with her dear hubby. If that's so, it is like Rita merged with Lila. Or, since this is a professional killer rather than a loner serial killer, perhaps it'll be more Mr. and Mrs. Smith. At the very least, there should be a decent amount of blood and darkness in the film. McElroy had his pen in Halloween 4, Spawn, Wrong Turn, The Marine, and the upcoming Tekken film.

Don't worry, Paramount didn't fall down and hurt themselves ... even if Tom Cruise might secretly wish they would. Instead, the studio has added another notch on its bedpost of upcoming projects.

According to Variety (via Sci-Fi Wire), Paramount's specialty division (aka Paramount Vantage) has acquired worldwide rights to the psychological thriller Fracture by Alan McElroy (who also wrote Spawn and The Marine) for producers Mike Macari and Neil Edelstein of, among other things, The Ring and the recent thriller The Invisible.

This Fracture should not be confused with the other Fracture (which I mentioned before) being directed by Gregory Hoblit. That film features Anthony Hopkins as a killer who gets off on a technicality and Ryan Gosling as the DA trying to put him back behind bars. They are not the same film. Instead, the story of this film centers around a desperate man's search for his wife and children after they disappear without a trace into a hospital emergency room. At the moment, this Fracture has no director attached (although it's out to some), a cast or an expected start date.