Earlier this year, Don Winslow earned the only perfect score we’ve ever handed out since the Real Book Spy Launched in 2015. The Force, an epic cop drama released in June from William Morrow, scored a 10/10 on our rating scale.
The Force, which was a New York Times and international bestseller, was the first of Don Winslow’s books published by William Morrow–it won’t, however, be the last. News broke Monday evening that HarperCollins had secured the rights to two more of Winslow’s future books, with publication for them tentatively scheduled for 2021 and 2022.
“Don is working at the peak of his considerable powers, and if the publishing success of The Force and The Cartel and the upcoming movies based on them are any indication, his future is going to be very bright indeed. I couldn’t be happier to have the chance to work on more books with him,” said David Highfill, VP/Executive Editor of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, in a press release from the publisher.
The press release also noted that Twentieth Century Fox had previously purchased the rights to Winslow’s The Cartel for a reported $6 million, with filmmaker Ridley Scott (Gladiator, The Martian, Blade Runner, Black Hawk Down) set to direct the movie which will begin filming in January 2018. Likewise, Twentieth Century Fox also bought the rights to The Force, with Pulitzer-Prize winner David Mamet writing the screenplay and James Mangold (Logan, Walk the Line, Copland) directing.
All things considered, this is terrific news for readers, who are the real winners here. The partnership between Don Winslow and HarperCollins has proven to be a real powerhouse, as indicated by the terrific release of The Force this summer. As for book details, Deadline has the exclusive scoop on Winslow’s future projects.
Sources said both books are big commercial swings, neither of which are set in the drug world like his seminal books The Cartel and The Power of the Dog. Winslow is far down the road on the first book, and it will be shopped for movie treatment shortly. The second novel is a passion project that Winslow has been working on for a decade.
Winslow’s original deal with William Morrow was also a two-book deal, with the second book (following The Force) being the highly-anticipated third novel in the author’s Cartel series. No publishing date has been set for the still-untitled sequel to The Cartel, though it’s likely it’ll hit bookstores sometime in 2018 or 2019 at the latest.