According to Pajiba’s Hollywood Cog, Eric Bana is the leading contender to play fictional SAS agent Nick Stone, star of the series of books written by Andy McNab.
The first book to be adapted, “Firewall,” is actually the third in the series and will be retitled “Echelon,” most likely to keep it from sounding like a lame internet hacker movie (or that Harrison Ford film). Author McNab brings some real-life experience to his books as he is a former SAS officer himself (and as a consequence, McNab is not his real name) and he was one of the most highly decorated British officers from the first Gulf War. He was also a weapons coordinator on Michael Mann’s “Heat.” Pajiba’s thin logline for “Echelon” finds Stone attemping “to prevent a terrorist organization from accessing the world’s largest computer intelligence database.” We hope it isn’t as simple as that, and reading the Publisher’s Weekly book synopsis, it certainly seems a bit more involved:
This is McNab’s third Nick Stone novel, and when you factor in all the times that Stone is stalked, betrayed, mugged, drugged, beaten, frozen to within an inch of his life and nearly blown to bits, it’s a wonder the stoic British ex-SAS (special forces) operative is still alive. In many ways, Stone is the perfect thriller hero: someone strong enough to absorb punishment, smart enough to game plan the details of the job and just enough of a line soldier not to ask too many questions about his assignment. Just to make sure, McNab (himself a former SAS agent) gives Stone the perfect reason not to be inquisitive: his ward, Kelly, is catatonic with post-traumatic stress disorder, and since her treatment is wildly expensive, Stone finds himself in the middle of a totally unprofessional kidnapping of Russian mafia kingpin Valentin Lebed in Helsinki. When it all goes violently wrong, Stone lets Lebed go for a price, and leaps at the chance to earn even more money when Lebed’s attractive assistant, Liv, gives him another assignment: break into a Finnish safe house for a little software theft. It will come as no surprise that the theft puts Stone in the gunsights of the NSA and the Russian mob. Most of the novel is a record of Stone bouncing between a rock and a hard place, trying to complete his mission, avoid capture and stay alive, with McNab’s real-life adventures the source for Stone’s. In this genre, all plans are made to fail, except perhaps McNab’s plan to take the thriller world by storm.
As usual, this is very early in the film’s stages but does have a script from producer John Connor. It remains to be seen if Bana will sign on, but we like the choice. The actor stars in Joe Wright’s assassin thriller “Hanna” coming out next spring, and was most recently in talks to join “By Virtue Fall,” the directorial debut by “Up In The Air” scribe Sheldon Turner.
Have just read the book for the second time, I personally think the first novel would have been easier to adapt to the big screen. However as a fan of both Bana and McNab I eagerly await release.