Knightley and Farrell will Walk on London Boulevard

Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed) has teamed with Quentin Curtis to acquire rights to the Ken Bruen novel "London Boulevard." Monahan plans to co-produce, write and possibly make his directorial debut. Ken Bruen is becoming known for his hard-hitting anti-crime novels and in "London Boulevard" he takes on the plot of the classic Hollywood movie, "Sunset Boulevard," and adapts it to a London setting. There are about three plots going on in the book, all of them expertly handled and there's a cast of characters Dickens would have been proud of.

Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean) and Colin Farrell who just won the Golden Globe for "In Bruges" are set to star in the film which story sees a South London criminal called Mitchell (Farrell) released from prison after serving three years for an assault he doesn't remember committing. He gets set up as a live-in handyman to a young actress (Knightley), but after tangling with a loan shark finds that he's pissing off have the people he meets and the rest are turning up dead.

The film will shoot this summer in London, after Farrell finishes work on "The Way Back" and Knightley makes "Last Night" and "The Beautiful And Damned."

Monahan also will adapt the remake of the Korean film "The Chaser" for WB and just signed with Paramount to write a fact-based thriller about a drug dealer who traded a prison sentence for an undercover stint.