Lionsgate, Platt pick up 'Package'

Brett Simon to direct Swierczynski adaptation

By MICHAEL FLEMING

Lionsgate has acquired the Duane Swierczynski novel "Severance Package" and has hired helmer Brett Simon ("Assassination of a High School President") to write the script with the author and direct.

Marc Platt and Adam Siegel will produce the action comedy.

The protag is a media relations director of a financial company who learns that the firm was a front for a covert intelligence agency that is being shut down immediately, with every manager scheduled to be terminated--literally. The novel is a recipe for a Tarantino-esque, stylistically violent film, and it was discovered by Marc Platt Prods. prexy Siegel and Lionsgate veep Jim Miller. Novel was published May 27 by St. Martin's Minotaur.