Cormac McCarthy Delivers Movie Script: The Counselor

When it comes to the material of Pulitzer Prize winning author Cormac McCarthy, screenwriters are usually tasked with bringing his novels into script format. But now the brilliant writer has penned his first ever screenplay. That’s what I call, cutting out the middle man.

When All the Pretty Horses found its way to the screen, Matt Damon starred. In No Country for Old Men, stars were made of Josh Brolin and Javier Bardem. I still much prefer the novel to the film version of The Road, not that Viggo Mortensen didn’t act well. Tommy Lee Jones directed an adaptation of The Sunset Limited. Now its time for The Counselor. It appears McCarthy skipped writing a novel and brought this piece to life directly in screenplay format.

The Counselor follows an attorney who doesn’t mind a little walk on the wild side. He gets his feet wet with some illegal drug trade on the side, figuring there’s no way it’ll come back to bite him. But the floor quickly drops out, as it does tend to do.

The piece is set in modern day in the American southwest. Steve Schwartz, part of the team buying McCarthy’s first script, told Deadline, “McCarthy’s wit and humor in the dialogue make the nightmare even scarier.”

The good word is, McCarthy’s agents were seriously expecting to be presented with a new novel when the writer surprised them with this script.