Halle Berry will produce and star in a film adaptation of former President Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s The President Is Missing, Deadline reports.
Clinton and Patterson’s thriller, jointly published in 2018 by Little, Brown and Knopf, follows U.S. President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan, who is confronted with a hostile Congress and a disloyal vice president and disappears from public view amidst assassination threats and terrorist attacks. A critic for Kirkus called the book, the first of three collaborations between Clinton and Patterson, “formulaic but reasonably fun provided you have no expectations concerning probability or literary quality.”
Berry, the Oscar-winning actor known for her roles in films including Boomerang, Bulworth, and Monster’s Ball, will play the president, now named Joanna Duncan, in the adaptation. The screenplay will be written by Nicole Perlman (Guardians of the Galaxy) and David Chasteen (the series CIA). Berry, Clinton, and Patterson are among the film’s producers. Apple is developing the film.
The novel was previously set to be adapted as a Showtime series with David Oyelowo but was scrapped at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deadline also reports that Berry is set to produce and star in a film adaptation of Laura Lippman’s 2018 suspense novel, Sunburn, which will be written by Michelle Dean (The Act) and directed by Liz Garbus (the docuseries Harry & Meghan).
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
