Bass to adapt Buckley's 'Boomsday'

GreeneStreet, Das Films option satirical novel

By MICHAEL FLEMING

GreeneStreet Films has teamed with Das Films to option "Boomsday," a satirical novel by "Thank You for Smoking" author Christopher Buckley.

Ron Bass and Jen Smolka have been set to write the script.

The protagonist is a D.C. lobbyist who casts herself in the center of a firestorm after she half-jokingly blogs a solution to the stress that retiring baby boomers will place on the Social Security system: a voluntary suicide program for the aging.

"Rarely do you find such powerful and timely material that lends itself so well to film, and Ron Bass is a great fit to adapt it," said GreeneStreet's John Penotti.

GreeneStreet Films will finance and produce with Sriram Das and Melanie Shanley, GreenStreet's director of development who brought in the project.

GreeneStreet Intl. will sell foreign rights. GSM previously set a deal with Das to finance development of a slate of pictures, but the Buckley book deal is separate from that arrangement.

GreeneStreet Films will next finance and produce "The Invisible Woman," to be directed by "Cloverfield" helmer Matt Reeves. The company recently wrapped several films, including the John Polson-directed Russell Crowe starrer "Tenderness," which Lionsgate will release.

Bass most recently scripted Fox Searchlight's "Amelia," the Mira Nair-directed Amelia Earhart biopic that stars Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.