Sidney Kimmel Entertainment has optioned the rights to Busted: A Tale Of Corruption And Betrayal In The City Of Brotherly Love, a police crime thriller written by Wendy Ruderman and Barbara Laker. It will serve as SKE’s debut television project with True Detective producers Anonymous Content.

Sex and the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker is attached to star in one of the two main roles in the hourlong show. David Frankel is attached to direct and executive produce the pilot. Don Roos will write the pilot. SKE President Jim Tauber, SKE President of Production Carla Hacken, and Steve Golin, Managing Partner of Anonymous Content, announced it.

Book is based on investigative reporters Wendy Ruderman’s and Barbara Laker’s non-fiction book of the same name. Published by Harper Collins in March, it chronicles their efforts to uncover one of the biggest police corruption scandals in Philadelphia’s history. The 2009 10-month series of articles in the Philadelphia Daily News entitled “Tainted Justice” earned them a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting.

This becomes the latest series to congeal with movie elements. Frankel has directed The Devil Wears Prada, Marley & Me, Hope Springs and most recently, One Chance. Roos’ screen credits range from Single White Female to Marley & Me. Both worked with Hacken at Fox 2000, and she got the book rights from WME while she was an indie producer. She brought it to SKE when she was hired as president of production. She will be exec producer.

“Wendy and Barbara have written an amazing true story, and we’re thrilled for it to be SKE’s first television project,” she and Tauber said in a statement. “Sarah Jessica’s coming on board, along with David Frankel and Don Roos is simply a perfect combination that we couldn’t be happier about.”

SKE and Anonymous will shop the project after they’ve set the rest of the cast. Parker is repped by CAA. Frankel by Anonymous Content and WME; the book was brokered by WME and Larry Weissman and Roos by UTA. SKE’s Nick Hanks for SKE and Anonymous Content’s Dave Fierson repped the producers.

Source – Deadline