According to Variety, Cruise’s hilarious film studio United Artists picked up the rights today to Douglas Preston’s serial-killer novel The Monster of Florence, with Cruise tentatively attached to star. Does that mean he’s playing a murderer who knows what he’s doing (unlike his Valkyrie character, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who botches an attempt on Hitler’s life)? Probably not — the book is the real-life story of Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spez investigating a series of unsolved killings, so some kind of persecuted truth-seeker role is more likely. Still, we’re just glad to hear that United Artists is still doing something. [Variety]
