Jack Reacher Author Lee Child Teams With Fremantle-Backed Dancing Ledge On Black Mirror-Style True Crime Drama

EXCLUSIVE: Jack Reacher author Lee Child has teamed up with Fremantle-backed producer Dancing Ledge Productions to develop a Black Mirror-meets-Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri true crime anthology drama series.

Child has partnered with Dancing Ledge, which has worked on series including Netflixs Delhi Crime and HBO co-pro The New Pope, on Lee Child: True Crime, a series that dramatizes the stories of real-life men and women from around the world who have been driven to stand up and put their lives on the line, fighting for justice in the face of great danger.

Laurence Bowen told Deadline that the project originated when he had just seen Martin McDonaghs Frances McDormand-fronted dark comedy, which itself was inspired by a real-life crime in Texas. He added that they wanted to find real-life Jack Reachers.

“I had the idea of doing a true crime Black Mirror, a series where each episode is going to be connected by a strong brand, mood and tone. All of the episodes will end with a great sense of hope and redemption. A lot of true crime drama tends to be about the famous and infamous and thats great but Lee and I were fascinated by ordinary people, the people that dont get written about. If we can find them, theres something so interesting about those people who have been forced to find something inside themselves, theres nothing quite like that,” he added.

Dancing Ledge, which is 25% owned by American Gods producer Fremantle, has put together a research team to comb through real-life crime stories from the U.S., Canada, El Salvador and Thailand and is now on the hunt for a showrunner to guide the project before taking it out to broadcasters in the U.S. and around the world.

Bowen said that anthology series are coming back in fashion, with the likes of Jordan Peeles The Twilight Zone, as “people like to graze”. “The idea of tapping into what Lee Childs represents to a global audience is really interesting. Were taking him as a brand rather than simply adapting something he wrote,” he added.

Bowen said that he pitched the idea of the series to Child on a bench outside of the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.

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Deadline