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Sony Pictures has optioned film rights to Richard Clarke's nonfiction best seller "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror" for producer John Calley.
"Enemies" -- which was published last month by the Free Press, a subsidiary of Simon & Schuster -- has been at the center of the current national debate about America's readiness to respond to terrorist threats before Sept. 11. Clarke, who was a counterterrorism expert in the administrations of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, appeared before the 9/11 Commission the week the book was published. During that hearing, he testified that the Bush White House didn't consider terrorism "an urgent issue" in the months before the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.
His political memoir, currently in second place on Amazon.com's sales ranking, offers Clarke's assessment of the anti-terrorist efforts of the past four White Houses, all of which he worked in. "The book, written in a compelling, highly readable style, at times almost seems like a fiction thriller," Amazon.com reviewer John Moe wrote.
Calley, who stepped down as chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment in the fall, is producing such films as Mike Nichols' "Closer," an adaptation of Patrick Marber's play about two couples that is scheduled for a December release, and the big-screen adaptation of the fiction best seller "The Da Vinci Code," along with producer Brian Grazer and director Ron Howard. Clarke was repped by ICM in the deal.
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