George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures Acquires Film Rights to Navarro’s “Three Minutes to Doomsday”

It’s a special three minutes for Joe Navarro

George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures has acquired the film rights to the Cuban author, public speaker and former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent’s book Three Minutes to Doomsday.

Joe Navarro

The deal was brokered by Abrams Artists Agency, after Scribner bought the book’s North American rights.

Written by Navarro and Howard Means, Three Minutes to Doomsday recounts efforts by Navarro, during his career the FBI’s leading body-language expert, to track down Clyde Lee Conrad, an Army officer who sold secrets to Hungary during the Cold War. The book focuses on Navarro’s relationship and interviews with Rod Ramsey, who knew of Conrad’s crime.

Co-author Means has collaborated on multiple bestsellers, including the Robert Baer books See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil that led to Clooney’s movie Syriana, for which he received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Baer these days is a frequent national-security commentator on CNN and elsewhere.

Smokehouse Pictures’ next film is Our Brand Is Crisis, a comedy set during the 2002 Bolivian presidential election and based on the true story of Democratic political consultants Greenberg Carville Shrum as they bring U.S. campaign techniques to South America. It’s directed by David Gordon Green and set for release in 2016.

Navarro is represented through Abrams Artists Agency by Steve Ross and Paul Weitzman.