EXCLUSIVE: After a career full of performances in front of the camera, Tobey Maguire is ready to take his place behind it. Maguire’s Material and Lawrence Grey’s Grey Matter Productions have acquired the screen rights to the Jo Nesbo novella Blood on Snow. They will develop it as a directorial debut vehicle for Maguire. The bestselling Norwegian author Nesbo will adapt the script himself from his 2015 thriller.

Jo Nesbo REX/Shutterstock

The tale centers around a talented trigger man named Olav, who has a love for storytelling and doing the dirty business for his employer, one of Norway’s most powerful crime bosses. When the boss tells Olav to kill his own adulterous wife, Olav finds himself torn between loyalty and love when he falls for the marked woman. It leads him to seek out his boss’s rival, and it puts everything in his life at stake. The film will be produced by Lawrence Grey, Maguire and his Material partner Matthew Plouffe. The exec producers are Grey Matter’s Ben Everard as well as Nesbo and his agent Niclas Salomonsson. Nesbo is best known for his gritty Norwegian mystery novel series that revolves around the sleuth Harry Hole. Michael Fassbender plays him in The Snowman, the Tomas Alfredson-directed Working Title-produced thriller that Universal releases October 17. Rebecca Ferguson, Val Kilmer and J.K. Simmons also star. Separately percolating is Nesbo’s The Son, which Nine Stories and Bold Films are developing with Jake Gyllenhaal starring and producing, and Denis Villenueve directing.

Grey Matter recently produced the genre hit Lights Out, with a sequel in the offing, and it is teamed on a Panama Papers drama with director Steven Soderbergh, and has the MI6 formation drama Section 6 which Joe Cornish will direct at Universal with Jack O’Connell starring. Material just set up the Mark Heyman-scripted Black Panthers vs S.W.A.T. drama The Standoff at Netflix, with Justin Lin directing and also producing. Maguire and Plouffe most recently produced Pawn Sacrifice, Z For Zachariah and The 5th Wave. WME co-reps Nesbo with Salomonsson, and Material is repped by WME and Management 360.