Will Packer’s company Will Packer Productions has tapped Leon Chills to adapt Stan Parish’s novel Love and Theft into a film for Universal Pictures. The film is a global romantic heist film set in three locations: Las Vegas, Mexico, and Spain.
Love and Theft centers on Alex Cassidy and Diane Alison, who develop an instant and undeniable chemistry when they meet at a party in Princeton, New Jersey. She’s a single mother, local fixture and owner of a successful catering company. He’s a single father and weekend homeowner—and leader of an armed robbery crew that just pulled off a record-breaking, precision jewel heist in Las Vegas. Neither one realizes that their lives have overlapped before and that the shared history they uncover will threaten everyone they love.
Parish’s novel was published by Penguin Random House through their Knopf Doubleday imprint in 2020.
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Packer and Johanna Byer will produce the film adaptation for Will Packer Productions. Universal Pictures’ Vice President of Production Development, Lexi Barta, is overseeing the project for the studio. Alvie Hurtado will oversee it for Packer Productions.
Love and Theft is just another project that Will Packer Productions is developing with Universal Pictures through his first-look deal. He also produced hit movies like Night School and Girls Trip. Both were the top-grossing comedies of 2017 and 2018 respectively. Up next, Packer Productions and Universal are collaborating on Idris Elba’s survival thriller Beast. That is due out later this year. Packer is also developing the London Hughes-starrer Hot Mess. He is also teaming with EbonyLife to develop an action thriller based on Bloomberg’s, “The Fall of the Billionaire Gucci Master” article. As well as the erotic drama Deeper. And Like It’s the Last, a romantic drama set in the world of track and field, from director Felicia Pride.
Chills has previously written episodes of the Netflix sports drama Spinning Out. As well as Amazon Prime’s YA drama The Wilds, having served as a story editor on the latter. He came upon his first spec sale a couple of years back with Shadow Force, an action drama set up at Lionsgate, with Kerry Washington and Sterling K. Brown attached to star.