French Connection is partnering with Korean Dream Capture Studios to develop an English-language adaptation of Peter May’s thriller The Killing Room, the third tome in his so-called China thrillers.

Other upcoming pictures on French Connection’s slate include Solveig Anspach’s The Far Cry and Cannes regular Raphael Nadjari’s next film Yskor about a female Jewish Cantor, which is due to start shooting in Canada early next year.

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Alexis Dantec and Fred Bellaiche’s French Connection, which bought rights to The Killing Room two years ago, is transposing the novel’s original setting of Shanghai and Beijing to Seoul.

The action revolves around a murder investigation by a Korean police chief and a French pathologist following the discovery of 18 bodies in the vault of a Franco-Korean bank.

Paris-based Korean producer Yoon Seok of Keystones Films is also involved in the project. Dream Capture has signed a co-development deal with Korean studio Showbox for the project.

Nicolas Peufaillit, who wrote the original screenplay for The Prophet, is currently working on a first adaptation draft. The film will be predominantly in English and Korean with some French and Korean dialogue.

The Anspach picture is an adaptation of Nicolas Brown’s The Far Cry revolving around the unsolved murder of an unidentified girl.

Anspach and co-writer Pierre Erwann Guillaume have transposed the original setting from 1950s America and Mexico to contemporary Europe and transformed the male protagonist into a woman.

Nadjari’s feature Yskor is the director’s first feature since the Israel-set Tehilim, which screened in competition at Cannes in 2007.

The new feature revolves around a female Jewish Cantor who is questioning her calling in life. French Connection is currently in advanced talks a number of Canadian producers to cooperate on the film.

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