Angelina Jolie – still maybe the sexist thing alive, in my eyes – and Fox 2000 are teaming to bring Patricia Cornwell’s “Dr. Kay Scarpetta” to the big screen. The bookworms out there know that Scarpetta has been Cornwell’s protagonist in 16 novels – since 1990 they’ve come out almost annually. While I’ve never read any of them, I realize that it’s rather surprising that it’s taken this long to bring the books to the big screen, considering how popular they – and the character – are.
Scarpetta is a hot, crime-solving genius (naturally) who works in a medical examiner’s office and solves gruesome crimes. She’s like a sexy one-woman C.S.I. team. The books have lurid titles like “The Body Farm”, “Cruel and Unusual”, “Cause of Death”, and “Postmortem”, and although there isn’t a specific novel being adapted, it will be in the vein of SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SE7EN, as are many of the stories. (Variety compares it to the way the “Bourne” flicks broke away from Robert Ludlum’s material but still kept the same style and spirit.)
Of course since there are so damn many of the novels, Fox sees a franchise here. Anything that brings us images of Angelina Jolie bent over a hacked-up corpse can go on forever, as far as I’m concerned. (That doesn’t make me weird, does it?)