Brad Pitt: Born Again Book Nerd?

The past two days have been bookended by news from the front of Brad Pitt’s literary land-grab. Yesterday the Weinstein Company announced it had shifted the release date of “Killing Them Softly,” an adaptation of George V. Higgins’ Cogan’s Trade starring and produced by Pitt, to an Oscar-optimizing November 30. And word just got out that Pitt has been quietly developing an adaptation of IBM and the Holocaust, Edwin Black’s bestselling investigation into the computer conglom’s role assisting the Nazis to target Jews.

Perhaps literary evangelism is the most apt analogy for Pitt’s zeal for using his box office muscle to move challenging literary prizewinners from the rarefied microbrew-and-kale-salad haunts of the McSweeney’s generation to anyone within reach of a multiplex or the cable remote. Over the past decade, Pitt has undergone a self-generated conversion from matinee idol to serious-minded producer-actor and hardcore bibliophile, whose taste for ambitious, thought-provoking book-based material could give Scott Rudin — the Godfather of page-to-screen prestige pictures — a run for his money.

Read more. Thanks Gabriella. Interesting article, I must say.