'A Cool Breeze On The Underground': Cory Finley Will Direct Don Winslow TV Adaptation Executive Produced By Rian Johnson

Cory Finley, director of Bad Education and Thoroughbreds, will write and direct a TV adaptation of A Cool Breeze on the Underground, based on the first in a series of novels from popular author Don Winslow. Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman are set to executive produce the adaptation, which follows a private investigator working for a New England organization called The Bank. During the course of the story, the private eye is tasked with finding the missing daughter of a senator.

Deadline has the scoop on A Cool Breeze on the Underground, reporting that Cory Finley will write, direct, and executive produce the Don Winslow adaptation for TV, with Rian Johnson and Ram Bergman also executive producing. Winslow's book is the first in a series that also includes A Trail to Buddha's Mirror, Way Down on the High Lonely, A Long Walk Up the Water Slide, and While Drowning in the Desert.

In the book, "Neal Carey is not your usual private eye. A graduate student at Columbia University, he grew up on the streets of New York, usually on the wrong side of the law. Then he met Joe Graham, a one-armed P.I. who introduced him to the Bank, an exclusive New England institution with a sideline in keeping its wealthy clients happy and out of trouble. They pay Neal's college tuition, and Neal gets an education that can't be found in any textbook – from learning how to trail a suspect to mastering the proper way to search a room." Deadline adds that in the book, the main character is "assigned to find the rebellious teen daughter of a prominent senator who has gone underground in the violent London punk scene, rife with crime, drugs, and danger."

The first book was published in 1991 and will get a 30th-anniversary re-release along with the subsequent entries through Blackstone Publishing next year. In the years since it first hit bookshelves, Winslow has become a much bigger best-selling author, with titles like The Cartel and The Force, both of which are getting adaptations of their own. The Cartel series is being adapted into an FX series while James Mangold is attached to helm a film version of The Force.

Johnson, Bergman, and Nena Rodrigue will executive produce A Cool Breeze on the Underground through their T-Street banner. Author Winslow is also set to executive produe alongside Shane Salerno via The Story Facotry. Ozark's Chris Mundy is also executive producing.