It’s been just a couple of weeks since venerable author Cormac McCarthy sold his first spec script, The Counselor, and already he’s going through that rite of passage of so many spec screenplay authors: seeing his work “attached” to director Ridley Scott, who will ensure that it won’t see the light of day for years to come. Of course, Deadline swears that Scott is genuinely interested in making The Counselor his next film after Prometheus—moving from the deep reaches of outer space to the less alien but no less desolate or dangerous Southwest—and that he’s even gone so far as to discuss the script with McCarthy directly, rather than just going the usual route and using it to feather his giant nest. Also promising/not so promising is that Scott has shown serious interest in McCarthy’s work before, at one time attaching himself to an adaptation of Blood Meridian before moving on to putting his name on something else that he ultimately didn’t do. Hopefully either Scott will follow through this time or quickly pass the project on to someone else, after his attentions once again become as short-lived as his apparent interest in that Blade Runner reboot that isn’t in his current “to-do” pile anymore and no one has mentioned in a while either, shhhhh.

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