'Logan' Director James Mangold In Talks To Direct Don Winslow's 'The Force'

Get excited, Cop Land fans, because director James Mangold is making another cop movie. After knocking Logan far out of the ballpark, Mangold has lined up his next project: an adaptation of Don Winslow's (The Cartel) upcoming novel, The Force. Stephen King called Winslow's latest – a story about corrupt cops in New York City – "The Godfather, only with cops. It's that good."

Here's what we know.

Deadline is reporting a screenwriter will soon board the 20th Century Fox project to develop the script with Mangold. The studio picked up the book last fall in a seven-figure deal. This is not the first time one of Winslow's novels has drawn serious heat from studios and talent. The author's co-writer on the adaptation of his novel Savages, Shane Salerno (Avatar 3), is producing The Force along with Ridley Scott and Kevin J. Walsh (Manchester by the Sea).

Winslow's novel follows Denny Malone, who's been a part of the NYPD for 18 years of his life. Malone and his crew are some of the city's toughest, dirtiest cops. They stole millions of dollars in a historic heroin bust, which doesn't go unnoticed by the FBI. A part of Winslow's story is whether Malone, living in a city on the verge of erupting, gives up his crew.

Here's the official synopsis for the novel from Harper Collins:

All Denny Malone wants is to be a good cop.

He is "the King of Manhattan North," a highly decorated NYPD detective sergeant and the real leader of "Da Force." Malone and his crew are the smartest, the toughest, the quickest, the bravest, and the baddest, an elite special unit given unrestricted authority to wage war on gangs, drugs and guns. Every day and every night for the eighteen years he's spent on the Job, Malone has served on the front lines, witnessing the hurt, the dead, the victims, the perps. He's done whatever it takes to serve and protect in a city built by ambition and corruption, where no one is clean—including Malone himself.

What only a few know is that Denny Malone is dirty: he and his partners have stolen millions of dollars in drugs and cash in the wake of the biggest heroin bust in the city's history. Now Malone is caught in a trap and being squeezed by the Feds, and he must walk the thin line between betraying his brothers and partners, the Job, his family, and the woman he loves, trying to survive, body and soul, while the city teeters on the brink of a racial conflagration that could destroy them all.

Based on years of research inside the NYPD, this is the great cop novel of our time and a book only Don Winslow could write: a haunting and heartbreaking story of greed and violence, inequality and race, crime and injustice, retribution and redemption that reveals the seemingly insurmountable tensions between the police and the diverse citizens they serve. A searing portrait of a city and a courageous, heroic, and deeply flawed man who stands at the edge of its abyss, The Force is a masterpiece of urban living full of shocking and surprising twists, leavened by flashes of dark humor, a morally complex and utterly riveting dissection of modern American society and the controversial issues confronting and dividing us today.

The Force sounds like another crime epic from Winslow, whose The Power of the Dog and The Cartel are massive and present entirely tangible, well-researched worlds. He always paints authentic pictures. Over the years, various works of his have interested Martin Scorsese, William Friedkin, Peter Berg, and Michael Mann. Now we can add Mangold to that impressive list of filmmakers and keep an eye out for future developments on The Force, which sounds plenty different from Cop Land, a movie that never gets old.

Don Winslow's The Force hits bookshelves June 20.