United Artists acquires The Executioner’s Song film rights

United Artists has acquired the rights to the 1982 film The Executioner’s Song for a new adaptation based on Norman Mailer’s book. Jacob Elordi is set to star as Gary Gilmore and serve as a producer, Deadline said.

Mailer’s true-crime novel, published in 1979, tells the story of Gilmore, who killed two men in Utah and demanded that his death sentence be carried out. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1980.

The case and the earlier film

Gilmore killed the men in separate robberies on successive days in July 1976. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death that September. He was executed by firing squad on 17 January 1977, becoming the first person executed in the United States after the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 following a moratorium of more than four years.

The earlier adaptation was a television film directed by Lawrence Schiller from Mailer’s screenplay, with Tommy Lee Jones playing Gilmore. Schiller’s interviews with Gilmore, his family and other key figures formed the foundation of the book.

The new production

United Artists’ Scott Stuber and Nick Nesbitt will produce with Elordi, his manager Matt Vioral and producer Sherry Marsh. Schiller will be an executive producer.

Elordi previously played the creature in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and appeared in Euphoria and The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

The project has no announced director, filming schedule or release date.