Latest in Jack Bender

In a competitive situation, Spyglass Media Group’s TV division has optioned Stephen King’s latest novel The Institute to develop as a limited series, with David E. Kelley (Big Little Lies) and Jack Bender (Lost), the same creative team behind the critically acclaimed Mr. Mercedes, also based on a King novel, attached…

The forthcoming third season of Mr. Mercedes is flipping the script in a way. While Season 2 was sourced from the End of Watch, the third book in the Stephen King crime novel series, season 3 will center on events of the third book, Finders Keepers. At TCA, director and executive producer Jack Bender explained the…

EXCLUSIVE: Media Rights Capital is back in business with Stephen King, its partner on The Dark Tower. MRC has optioned the Stephen King #1 bestselling novel The Outsider. MRC plans a 10-episode limited series adaptation, and they have secured Richard Price to write it. Jack Bender and Marty Bowen are exec producing…

It has been 30 years since Brendan Gleeson faced a career crossroads and chose acting over teaching, beginning a slow build toward a run of great movie performances. He has starred in films ranging from Braveheart to In Bruges, Gangs of New York, 28 Days Later, The Guard, Safe House and several Harry Potter films…

The premise of Audience Network’s new series, Mr. Mercedes, based on Stephen King’s 2014 novel, promises to involve some violent material. The series follows Brady Hartsfield (Harry Treadaway), a demented killer who taunts a retired police detective Bill Hodges (Brendan Gleeson) with a series of lurid letters and…

Lost director Jack Bender is set to direct and executive produce Syfy’s two-hour pilot Rewind, a thriller about a team of military field operatives and civilian scientists who use untested technology to travel back in time to alter past events in hopes of changing the future after a nuclear bomb destroys New York…

EXCLUSIVE: While Johnny Depp waits to see if director Gore Verbinski and producer Jerry Bruckheimer can figure out a way to salvage The Lone Ranger after Disney halted the film because of a huge budget, Depp is making forward progress on dusting off another period property. David Koepp has been set to write the script…

Jack Bender is reuniting with his fellow Lost pals Elizabeth Sarnoff, JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk, agreeing to join the upcoming Fox series Alcatraz as an executive producer/director. Sarnoff, the executive producer/showrunner, co-wrote the series pilot with Steven Lilien & Bryan Wynbrandt, who are co-executive…

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures and Skydance Productions have gone top shelf in trying to get its Jack Ryan franchise relaunch to the starting line. The studio has hired David Koepp to rewrite the film. I’m told that Koepp will be paid 7-figures to redraft the script by Adam Cozad. The project still has Lost‘s Jack Bende…

EXCLUSIVE: Paramount Pictures has scrapped a tentative plan for Chris Pine to resuscitate the Jack Ryan franchise before he reprises his James T. Kirk role in a Star Trek sequel. The slow process of nailing the Ryan script has prompted the studio to focus on getting Pine at the helm of the USS Enterprise first, even…

EXCLUSIVE: David Ellison’s Skydance Productions is negotiating a rights deal to turn the 1970s animated science fiction TV series Star Blazers into a large scale live action feature. Ellison will hire Christopher McQuarrie to write the script, with Ellison and Josh C. Kline producing with McQuarrie. The series was…

Lost director-producer Jack Bender has signed on to direct the Fox medical drama pilot Weekends at Bellevue. The project, which Fox got in turnaround, hails from the same studio, UMS, that produces Fox’s veteran medical drama House. Based on Dr. Julie Holland’s memoir, Bellevue, from former ER writer-producer Lisa…