John Grisham’s bestselling 1997 legal thriller novel The Partner is headed to television as a drama series project at Fox from writer Jon Cowan (Suits, Private Practice), Davis Entertainment (The Blacklist) and Sony Pictures TV Studios. The Partner, which has received a script commitment with penalty from the network…

UPDATES with more information: More than 900 authors including heavyweights Stephen King and John Grisham lent their names to a Sunday New York Times ad decrying Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for pressure tactics hurting writers published by Hachette. The Paris-based owner of Little, Brown, Grand Central, Hyperion and other…

Suzanne Herz, the Doubleday senior veep who has worked closely with that imprint’s signature authors John Grisham and Dan Brown, has been upped to EVP and Executive Director of Publishing. She continues to report to Anthony Chirico, President of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Here’s the just-released internal memo…

EXCLUSIVE: Fox 2000 is moving forward with an adaptation of the 2012 John Grisham bestseller The Racketeer, setting Frank Baldwin to write the script. Double Features partners Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher are producing. The novel revolves around a former marine-turned-attorney in a small Virginia law firm who…

Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures has acquired the rights to John Grisham’s bestselling novel Calico Joe, and Columbus will adapt it himself and direct. Set in the world of Major League Baseball, the novel is about fathers and sons, forgiveness and redemption. Book was published in April by Doubleday and has been atop the…

EXCLUSIVE: The Blind Side director John Lee Hancock has been set to write and direct The Partner, based on the John Grisham bestseller. The project is set up at New Regency, whose principal, Arnon Milchan, previously adapted the Grisham novels A Time To Kill, The Client and Runaway Jury, back in the day when Grisham…

With all the attention on the new series pickups at NBC, let’s not forget that the network has been eyeing another new series on tap for next season that has larger order than any of the newly picked-up shows – The Firm. I hear the deal for a 22-episode straight-to-series order to the project based on John Grisham’s…

Nearly two decades after John Grisham's The Firm made him a household name, the novel is becoming a TV series, which has locked in wide international distribution and is close to landing a domestic network too. NBC is in negotiations to pick up the 22-episode series, produced by eOne Television in association with SPT…

It is decision time for director Tony Scott. Tracking board missives made the rounds today that Scott might direct an adaptation of the John Grisham novel The Associate for Paramount, which has a script by William Monahan and a longstanding attachment by Shia LaBeouf. The story was picked up tonight by the LA Times…

William Monahan, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Departed, has signed with management firm Anonymous Content’s Michael Sugar. Sugar joins WME’s Chris Donnelly and attorney David Fox on Monahan’s rep team. Monahan is in post-production on London Boulevard, making his directing debut on a script he wrote, with Coli…