Warner Bros. developing McG thriller about a spy who's also a DJ, or whatever the hell

By Sean O'Neal | September 14, 2012 | 7:32pm

Aux Features Film

In one of the more illustrative examples of how a story can be twisted beyond all recognition on its way to the big screen, Deadline reports that an adaptation is moving forward for Jon Stock's 2009 thriller Dead Spy Running—a concept that originally concerned a suspended MI6 officer who becomes caught up in a Speed-like terrorist scenario involving a marathon runner strapped with explosives, but which now reportedly concerns a young spy who is also a DJ. The project has been kicking around for a while now, at one time being written by Syriana's Stephen Gaghan and attached to 50/50 director Jonathan Levine, though as far as we can tell, it never explicitly concerned a spy who is also a DJ. It did, however, promise to include "DJ culture"—along with "The Social Network, Steve Jobs, the Apple store," and other random youth signifiers tossed out by producer McG as a way of talking it up as "a spy story for this generation" [insert phat hip-hop beat].

Now, under A Horrible Way To Die's Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, Dead Spy seems to have taken that idea to the exxxtreme, with Deadline saying it's now about Danny Marchant, " a young DJ on the rise in the international world of electronic dance music" who's forced to flee with the pretty female secret agent who's been assigned to monitor him, after he is framed for the murder of his MI6 agent dad. This scenario, naturually, eventually leads to him near-singlehandedly defeating a worldwide terrorist threat, apparently by somehow using his DJ skills. Indeed, there is this from the synopsis: "As Danny tries to clear his name and avenge his father’s death, he gets deeper into the world of espionage while never forgetting his background and skills as a DJ."