Novelist Dennis Lehane—who has recently been stretching out into non-Boston-related crime stories with work on Boardwalk Empire (Atlantic City-based crime) and the screenplay for Silk Road (Internet-based crime)—is now attached to adapt the critically acclaimed French crime film A Prophet, for American audiences who don't want to read subtitles or look at actors whose names they don't already know. The 2009 Jacques Audiard film won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes for its portrayal of a young Arab man transformed by his time in a French prison from a fragile child into a hardened crime boss. Producer Toby Jaffe believes the story is a good fit for Lehane, whose novels Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and Shutter Island have all been adapted to film, along with the upcoming, also-Boston-based Live By Night, which will feature Ben Affleck behind and in front of the camera. It's as yet unknown in which Boston-area penitentiary Lehane's Prophet will be set.
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