While preparing to star alongside Jurnee Smollett in Misha Green’s upcoming hostage thriller Sunflower, Scott Speedman is ready to topline ABC’s drama pilot for RJ Decker, based on the 1987 novel Double Whammy by Carl Hiaasen. The project hails from Elementary creator Rob Doherty, with Speedman aiming for the lead role.
Paul McGuigan (Lucky Number Slevin, Wicker Park, Victor Frankenstein) directs the RJ Decker pilot from a script by Rob Doherty. ABC is familiar ground for Scott Speedman, who plays Nick Marsh on the network’s long-running medical drama Grey’s Anatomy. Filming for RJ Decker should not conflict with Scott Speedman’s recurring role in Grey’s Anatomy, as he plans to shoot both projects.
Here’s a synopsis for Carl Hiaasen’s Double Whammy novel, courtesy of Amazon:
R. J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye, is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman’s scam that’s anything but sportsmanlike, there’s a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida–and a lot that’s rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while she’s in bed with her new husband; and face deadly TV evangelists, dangerously seductive women, and a pistol-toting redneck with a pit bull on his arm. And here his own life becomes part of the stakes. For while the “double whammy” is the lure, first prize is for the most ingenious murder.
Whoa! That plot sounds very… Florida. According to Deadline, Scott Speedman’s RJ Decker is “someone who has charm to spare and the owner of a short fuse and a restless soul.” That sounds perfect for a gritty crime drama set in the wacky world of the Alligator State.
In addition to creating the show and writing the pilot, Doherty is the executive producer of the pilot with Carl Beverly and Sarah Timberman of Timberman-Beverly Productions, McGuigan, and Hiaasen.
Are you a fan of Carl Hiaasen’s novels? Have you read Double Whammy? What’s the craziest story you’ve heard come out of Florida? Let us know in the comments section below.
