Manhunt is Coming

It looks like Manhunt the movie is finally coming out!

Years passed. Then decades. Manhunt might have been consigned to the oblivion of once promising projects that nonetheless defied Hollywood adaptation—if not for producer and showrunner Monica Beletsky, a veteran writer from Friday Night Lights, Parenthood,and Fargo. “I had done some research and come across the figure of Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, and was so compelled by the fact that I had never been taught about the man. Essentially, the weight of everything after the assassination fell on his shoulders,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I thought that there could be a show in the universal story behind him, which is avenging a friend’s death.”

She pitched an idea for a show to Apple TV+ that would chronicle the aftermath of Lincoln’s death, but at that point wasn’t thinking of adapting any specific history book. “I saw it as more of a conspiracy thriller, more of a cat-and-mouse detective story,” she said. “I loved the idea of making Stanton the cat to Booth’s mouse.”

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “haven't you been hoping they'd turn this brilliant book into the great comedy it deserves to be?"

Sigh. Yes I was, faithful readers, YES I was:

I still say this should be a movie, and a funny one at that.  A mix of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (the British Union soldier who keeps volunteering to take Booth on one-on-one, oh by the way he had also cut his own nuts off), and the Simpsons (Sideshow Bob as Booth, Homer as his doofus companion Herold.) The shit writes itself; including the ongoing joke that no matter how gruesome a scene one is describing, or how much they claim Booth is the devil himself for what he's done to the country, nobody can go too far without off-handedly remarking how incredibly handsome he was. ("The flames whipped around Booth as I set my sight on him a final time, preparing to end this 12-day national nightmare...I closed one eye and focused on his face...which was, I must say, pleasant to look at...luminescent, really...")

Oh well, I'll still watch it anyways I guess.