Derek Haas news

Back in September 2009, I posted about “Popcorn Fiction”, a cool site featuring original fiction that had just gone online:

This site grew out of a love for pulpy short fiction that used to dominate popular magazines in the mid-20th Century. As a screenwriter, my partner and I have been tasked with adapting several of these for the big screen, including stories from Elmore Leonard and Richard Matheson and Donald Hamilton. Friends of ours have adapted Philip K. Dick and Isaac Asimov and Stephen King. I’ve also been listening to a great deal of classic radio, from The Shadow and Have Gun Will Travel to X Minus One and Suspense. I wanted to create a place where new popular short fiction could flourish, and Hollywood could have a new resource for cultivating great ideas. Not every story is a crime or science fiction story, but each is infinitely readable. I’ve commissioned some very talented authors to take a stab at the form, and look forward to publishing them here in the months ahead. Thanks… hope you enjoy.

That summary is written by Derek Haas, a screenwriter whose credits include 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), 3:10 to Yuma (2007), and Wanted (2008), and ‘host’ of “Popcorn Fiction.” I also posted about the site here and here.

Well, good news for Haas as he and his writing partner Michael Brandt just landed what looks like an interesting gig. Per THR:

Richard Gere and Topher Grace are teaming up for “The Double,” a Hyde Park-Imagenation Abu Dhabi spy thriller on which scribe Michael Brandt will make his directorial debut.

Brandt and his writing partner Derek Haas, who were wrote movies like “Wanted” and “3:10 to Yuma,” penned “Double,” which begins with a murder of a senator in Washington by a Soviet assassin long thought to be dead. A retired CIA operative (Gere), who spent his career going toe to toe with his Soviet nemeses, is forced to partner with a young FBI agent (Grace) to hunt the killer down.

You can visit “Popcorn Fiction” here.

Haas posts a new short story every Monday and Josh James thoughtfully links to them each week.

Comment Archive