Working Title has 'Alibi' in case of book buy

'German' being developed by Soderbergh, Clooney

By MICHAEL FLEMING

Bevan

Fellner

Working Title co-chairmen Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner have made a preemptive acquisition of "Alibi," a novel by Joseph Kanon to be published in May by Henry Holt.

Kanon wrote "The Good German," a novel being developed by Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney.

Story concerns a young, wealthy GI who arrives in post-war Venice in 1945 to visit his expatriate mother. He falls in love with an Italian Jewish girl, and his moral compass goes awry when he suspects mom's Italian fiance was a Nazi collaborator.

Bevan and Fellner will produce. Project was brought to them by Working Title exec Amelia Granger and sold by ICM's Ron Bernstein, who managed his third significant sale in the last week. He brokered Cormac McCarthy's novel "No Country for Old Men" to Paramount and made a seven-figure sale for "He's Just Not That Into You," a novel by "Sex and the City" vets Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo.