Roman Polanski to Make Thriller About a British PM

Roman Polanski to Make Thriller About a British PM

LONDON, November 8/PRNewswire/ -- Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski is to make a
feature film of Robert Harris's controversial new political thriller, The
Ghost, published by Hutchinson last month.

The novel tells the story of a former British Prime Minister,
struggling to complete his memoirs in Martha's Vineyard in the middle of
winter. When his assistant on the project is drowned, a new ghost writer
flies out from London to join him.

Filming is scheduled to begin next year. Robert Harris is
currently writing the screenplay in collaboration with Polanski. The
producers are Robert Benmussa and Alain Sarde, who produced Polanski's last
two films, The Pianist and Oliver Twist. The film will be distributed
worldwide by Summit International.

In a statement, Polanski says: "I have been looking for a
political thriller to direct for some time, and The Ghost could not be more
perfect. Robert has constructed a novel with such suspense, it is hard to put
down."

Robert Harris says: "Roman Polanski is a terrific director of
tense thrillers, and I couldn't imagine a better person to make a movie out
of The Ghost. There's a lot of psychological intrigue in the story, as well
as espionage and politics, and most of the action takes place in an
ocean-front house during the middle of winter - all of it classic Polanski
territory. I am thrilled to be working with him on the screenplay."

The two men have already collaborated once this year, on the
screenplay of Harris's 2003 bestseller, Pompeii, but that US$100 million
project has had to be put on hold because of the threatened Screen Actors'
Guild strike, due to begin next June, which is disrupting film making
throughout the world. The Ghost, which will feature an almost entirely
British cast, is less vulnerable to the effects of the dispute, and will be
filmed on location in northern Europe.

"It doesn't really matter where you do it," says Polanski. "It
just has to be somewhere on the Atlantic off season, where you have dunes and
empty roads and unlived-in holiday homes."

Note to Editors:

The Ghost by Robert Harris was published by Hutchinson on 4th
October 2007 and has been on the Sunday Times top ten bestseller list ever
since.

Source: The Random House Group

Contact: Emma Mitchell, Hutchinson Publicity Director, Random House, +44-207-840-8610, emitchell@randomhouse.co.uk

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