Jay Roach ("Austin Powers", "Meet the Parents") is attached to direct and Peter Landesman ("Who Killed Daniel Pearl?") has been set to write an untitled film about W. Mark Felt for Universal Pictures and Playtone reports Variety. The career FBI man revealed himself last year to be 'Deep Throat', the secret source Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein crack the Watergate cover-up conspiracy.
Felt teamed last summer with San Francisco attorney John O'Connor to reveal his secret in Vanity Fair. U and Playtone moved quickly to buy the life rights to Felt and his family, to make a deal with O'Connor and to acquire rights to a memoir Felt wrote in 1979. That book has been re-edited and will be reissued this spring.
Felt was the longtime J. Edgar Hoover aide who was passed over to succeed him in favor of Nixon appointee Patrick Gray. Felt was long a Deep Throat suspect. Felt's tale is tricky, because the Watergate investigation story was so skillfully covered in "All the President's Man." Landesman said the core comes in the G-man's motivations and the weight of keeping that secret. He doesn't buy the widespread speculation that Felt was seeking revenge for being snubbed by Nixon.
