Paramount has tapped Mark Heyman (Black Swan) to adapt the bestselling French thriller Syndrome E for film, according to a report by Deadline.
The presumed first in a series, the novel introduces Lucie Hennebelle, a detective investigating the murder of a film restorer, who was working on a film that induced hysterical blindness in one of her friends. It was published in the US last August by Viking; read our review here.
No director or other production details were released by the studio.
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Syndrome E
Franck Thilliez
This is the story of beleaguered detective Lucie Hennebelle, whose old friend has developed a case of spontaneous blindness after watching an extremely rare — and violent — film from the 1950s. Embedded in the film are subliminal images so unspeakably heinous that Lucie realizes she must get to the bottom of it — especially when nearly everyone who comes into contact with the film starts turning up dead.
Enlisting the help of Inspector Franck Sharko — a brooding, broken analyst for the Paris police who is exploring the film's connection to five murdered men left in the woods, Lucie begins to strip away the layers of what is perhaps the most disturbing and powerful film ever made. Soon Sharko and Lucie find themselves mired in a darkness that spreads across politics, religion, science, and art while stretching from France to Canada, Egypt to Rwanda, and beyond.
