In 2011, Denzel Washington was reportedly offered the lead role in this Warner Brothers remake of the Oscar-winning Argentine crime thriller "The Secret In Their Eyes," which was directed by Juan José Campanella.

Assuming Washington was indeed interested, he has been replaced by Chiwetel Ejiofor – not a bad swap, I’m sure many of you would agree.

International sales and distribution company IM Global boarded the project, and shopped it at the Cannes Film Market (Marche du Film) earlier this year.  

Billy Ray ("Breach," "Shattered Glass"), who was said to be attached to direct the remake, is still very much the man for the job, which centers on "a retired legal counselor [who] writes a novel hoping to find closure for one of his past unresolved homicide cases, and for his unreciprocated love with his superior – both of which still haunt him decades later."

Ejiofor will of course play the lead role, and he’ll be joined by Gwyneth Paltrow, and now Julia Roberts (who’s reportedly in negotiations to join the cast), in a remake that will set the story in Boston, with Ejiofor as a former MI-5 agent who joins an FBI task force, to solve a murder that continues to haunt him. 

It’s not yet public info what role Paltrow and Roberts will play; but if there’s any connection to the original film, either of them could very be Ejiofor’s superior, as described in the logline above. 

The Argentine film, which is available on home video platforms here in the USA, was based on Eduardo Sacheri’s novel "La Pregunta de Sus Ojos" ("The Question in Their Eyes").

I’ll follow up this post later with a look at that original, and how it might translate with Chiwetel now starring.