Scott Rudin Snags Rights to Garth Risk Hallberg's Unpublished CITY ON FIRE Novel

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Scott Rudin -- producer of films such as Captain Phillips and The Social Network and many Broadway productions, including this season's Betrayal and A Raisin in the Sun -- has nabbed the rights to Garth Risk Hallberg's new novel CITY ON FIRE. In a rare move, the 900-page book is heading to the big screen before inking a print deal.

Read the original report here.

CITY ON FIRE is set in New York City in 1977 just before the great blackout in July of that year. It follows an "ensemble cast" of characters, including a journalist, a detective and a heroin addict. The "very literary" novel captures both New York City in the late '70s and echoes what the city faces today.

Hallberg's stories and essays have appeared in Best New American Voices, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, New York Magazine,The Millions, where he's a contributing editor, and more. A 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Fiction and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's Balakian award for excellence in book reviewing, Garth teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Also executive producer of the TV series The Newsroom, Rudin has worked on film adaptations of the novels Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and No Country For Old Men. His Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, is currently in theaters. In the works are a new romantic comedy featuring Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Rosewater, Ex Machina, Finally Famous, Sinatra and The Smoker.

Among Rudin's recent Broadway producing credits are The Book of Mormon, The Testament of Mary, The Book of Mormon, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Death of a Salesman, The House of Blue Leaves, Jerusalem, The Motherf**ker with the Hat and many, many more.