Spitfire Pictures has optioned Richard Rhodes' nonfiction book "Deadly Feasts" to use as the basis for a thriller to be written by "Glory Road" scribe Christopher Cleveland reports Variety.
Rhodes wrote about scientific sleuths attempting to discover the cause of mad cow disease, a brain disease that proved similar to a fatal virus seen in tribes in New Guinea in the 1950s. The common thread turned out to be cannibalism: The tribes engaged in it, and the cattle got fed ground-up animal parts.
Spitfire and Cleveland are using the science to craft a cautionary tale in the style of 1970s paranoid thrillers like "The China Syndrome" and "The Parallax View."
