Adam Cooper On Writing ‘Sleeping Dogs’ And Reframing The Narrative

Director Adam Cooper also penned the screenplay of Sleeping Dogs, a new thriller headlined by Russell Crowe. During the interview, Cooper talked about how the movie differs from its source material (writer E.O. Chirovici’s The Book of Mirrors).

Sleeping Dogs centers on Roy Freeman (Russell Crowe), a former police detective who reinvestigates a previous murder case. Tommy Flanagan co-stars as Jimmy, Roy’s former partner who may not be telling the entire truth. Suffering from dementia, Roy attempts to piece together what happened years ago since a convict’s (Pacharo Mzembe) life hangs in the balance. The ensemble includes Karen Gillan, Marton Csokas and Harry Greenwood.

Check out our CinemAddicts review of Sleeping Dogs (on YouTube and Apple Podcasts):

“The adaptation of the screenplay from the book (The Book of Mirrors), it’s in many ways pretty different from the book,” said Adam Cooper, whose screenwriting credits include Exodus: Gods and Kings and Asassin’s Creed. “The central sort of murder mystery that took place in the past is something that we pulled from the book, but the character of Roy is a character that appears, I think, probably in the last 75 or 80 pages of the book and actually isn’t even the central figure of the narrative or sort of the play on his memory as it relates to sort of the way the plot unfolds. The character of Roy Freeman does exist in the book, but the way that he’s used sort of as a central figure is kind of unique to the film, because he’s not the central figure of the of the book. So we’ve kind of reframe the narrative of the book through the lens of kind of a tertiary character.”

Check out Eric Holmes’ interview with Adam Cooper:

Sleeping Dogs is now playing in theaters.