A Second Shot at “Confidential”

Los Angeles writer Jordan Harper seems to have become quite a hot property. His gritty, fast-moving crime novel She Rides Shotgun (Ecco), released in June, has won a great deal of critical praise, and now Deadline Hollywood reports that Harper—who has previously scripted episodes of The Mentalist and Gotham—is working on a small-screen adaptation of James Ellroy’s 1990 crime novel, L.A. Confidential:

… L.A. Confidential follows three homicide detectives, a female reporter, and a Hollywood actress whose paths intersect as the detectives pursue a sadistic serial killer through the seedy underbelly of glamorous 1950s Los Angeles. Harper executive produces with Milchan [who was among the producers of the 1997 film based on that same Ellroy yarn].

The project hails from the TV venture New Regency forged with Lionsgate, designed to mine New Regency’s library. With the project landing at CBS, sibling CBS TV Studios has come on board to co-produce.

This, of course, isn’t the first time Hollywood has sought to turn L.A. Confidential into a TV series. You may recall that back in 2003, a pilot was shot starring Kiefer Sutherland, Josh Hopkins, Melissa George, and Eric Roberts, but failed to spawn a weekly broadcast. (Watch the entirety of that pilot below.) Harper’s version currently shows more promise ... but things can always go wrong in television.



READ MORE: “Lost Pilots #2: L.A . Confidential: The Series” (The Soothsayer Review Archive).