Angelina Jolie scores movie most of Hollywood fumbled

[HMG] – After years of remakes, reboots and other creative cop-outs, it seems Hollywood has discovered an author who does not write in crayon. Patricia Cornwell. And Angelina Jolie will now bring her best-known work to the screen.

For twenty years, various studios have toyed with the notion of bringing Kay Scarpetta, Patricia’s highly successful pathologist/sleuth to the screen, but $10-million in development costs all came to nothing;

“I think she’s a bit of the runaway bride,” Cornwell says of the medical examiner whose sharp eye for crime has fueled seventeen best-selling novels. “She flirts, but won’t get married.”

And it could have stayed that way, but when Patricia met Angelina on the New York set of her new movie ‘Salt’ the two women soon found a way to put Kay on the screen; The new film will not be based on the books, and Angelina will play a modern Scarpetta, rather than one from the ’80′s where the books all began.

“I can understand why the studio doesn’t want to launch her as someone my age,” says the 53-year-old Cornwell. ‘And by resetting Scarpetta in 2010, they can update all the technology too.”

When she optioned the books as a movie in 1990, Patricia’s first choice as Kay was Jodie Foster. But Jodie passed. In 1998 Patricia tried to write the movie herself, but got nowhere. Then in 2000, Sony optioned the novels. But despite some A-list writing talent they let the plan drop. And by this time, Patricia was climbing the walls;

“I used to say it’s the promised land that I’m not allowed to enter,” she told the press at the time. “There are very few people who have been No. 1 on the bestseller list and never had a film made.”

But then Patricia met Angie, and Universal and Fox were soon in a Hollywood pie-fight to try and make the film theirs.

“When Angelina came out of left-field last year, I was floored,” says the author. “She had some pithy things to say about what she wanted to do. She was direct and goal-oriented,” Cornwell told the Times.

And Angie’s other big appeal for the author was her connection with people and food;

“She waited on everyone, getting them their lunch, while her own staff was seated. She was aware how other people were feeling and wanted them to be happy. It was not typical for people of her stature.”

Patricia then ends her tale with a very true sound-bite; “Usually, it’s all about them.”

Telling the tale of a CIA Officer who is accused of being a double agent, ‘Salt’ opens on July 23. There’s no dates for the new movie at all, but we’ll keep you advised as news arrives…