Informed Speculation

(Oh, I know, that headline makes no sense – of course, art imitates life!)…

I said often, as the saga of poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko began to unfold, that somebody was going to make a hell of a book out of it…but I didn’t realize just how frenzied the rush to cash in would be:

Johnny Depp is making a film about a former Russian spy whose poisoning death in London has touched off an international mystery, the trade magazine Variety reported.

Warner Bros. has bought the rights to a book about Alexander Litvinenko for Depp’s production company, Infinitum Nihil, the magazine reported Friday. Depp will produce the film and could star in it, the report said.

Warner Bros. is racing against director Michael Mann and Colombia Pictures, which has agreed to pay $1.5 million for the rights to another book being co-written by the former spy’s widow Marina Litvinenko, and Alex Goldfarb, a close friend, Variety reported later on its Web site.

The book is expected to be published in May by Simon & Schuster’s Free Press imprint, the report said.

Warner Bros. had tried unsuccessfully to buy the rights to the book by Litvinenko’s widow, the report said. The studio has acquired the rights to a book by New York Times journalist Alan Cowell, which is expected to be published next year by Doubleday.

None of this is surprising; the poisoning of a Russian spy in London, with strong hints of Kremlin involvement, is simply too irrestible to turn down.  Some day, I suspect, we’ll know what really happened…but it will be years from now, when some seemingly innocent document turns up in some archive somewhere.  For now, I guess we’ll have to settle for the Hollywood interpretation…