Road to Damascus

The man behind THE DARK KNIGHT, producer Charles Roven and his frequent collaborator Richard Suckle are developing DAMASCUS GATE, a political thriller involving a journalist and a group of extremists in modern-day Jerusalem for Columbia Pictures. THE INTERNATIONAL scribe Eric Singer will pen the script.

Based on Robert Stone’s 1998 novel, which Sony has acquired the rights to, the film is set in a world in which the Israel Palestine conflict is on the brink of being solved, when a washed up journalist comes upon an extremist plot to sabotage the effort. The title is a reference to a landmark gate in Jerusalem’s Old City (which I’ve been to, ha!) The producers insist that although this has the makings of a classic political thriller, it will obviously be a heavy character study as well, which is never really a bad thing. This is my early vote for Robert Downey Jr. as the journalist.