Christopher Storer, known for his hit series The Bear, will be directing the novel-to-film adaptation of Don Winslow The Winter of Frankie Machine. The producers will be Shane Salerno and The Story Factory, as Paramount Pictures will be distributing the film. Plans were already made for the movie to be written by Brian Koopelman and David Levien and directed by Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro as the lead role before the WGA strike, but this deal fell through thanks to the then-upcoming Irishman.

The novel is a thriller about Frankie Machiani, a hitman for the San Diego mob family. Frankie was asked by an LA crime boss to organize a meeting with Detroit and LA mob crime families, but it was a setup to kill him. Now Frankie is trying to survive as he pieces together who put him on the hit list.

Winslow and Scorsese were left with many filmmakers approaching them about the project but they didn’t stick until Storer came onto the scene, as they took a liking to The Bear, where a high-end chef comes back to his family Chicago sandwich shop after a relative’s death. Storer will be using the script written by Koopelman and Levien to help complete the project. While Scorsese was set to work on the production, his close friend DeNiro encouraged him to work on the novel I Heard You Paint Houses after receiving the novel for research in his role as Machiani.

There is currently no news about the film’s release date, though plenty are holding their breaths in anticipation as the film goes into production.