Colin Farrell is doing some of the best work of his career right now, both on the big screen and on TV. He’s received accolades for his performance in the Apple series Sugar, and has the Max series The Penguin on the way. Headed to Cannes is Belly of the Beast, a hot new film up for sale that will see Ferrell playing murderer and author Jack Henry Abbott, with Ben Stiller as literary giant Norman Mailer.
According to Deadline, the film is based on Jerome Loving’s book Jack & Norman: A State-Raised Convict & The Legacy of Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song”. Belly of the Beast will be directed by Andrew Haigh, known for acclaimed films All of Us Strangers, 45 Years, and Lean on Pete. Alexis Jolly will adapt the screenplay.
Ferrell is to play Abbott, who while incarcerated for various crimes managed to strike up a correspondence with Mailer (Stiller), who was researching his book The Executioner’s Song. Abbott convinced Mailer and others that he was a great author deserving of a second chance, and they worked to get him released. It worked, and weeks later in 1981, Abbott released his seminal memoir In the Belly of the Beast. Just six weeks later, Abbott murdered a man in New York, fled, and was again arrested. In reality, Abbott committed suicide in prison in 2002. Loving’s book and the film will propose that Abbott was later murdered in a strange echo of Mailer’s novel.
