Anthony Bourdain Crime Novel ‘Gone Bamboo’ Acquired By ‘The Conspirator’ Producers For Scripted Series

Greg Evans
·2 min read
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EXCLUSIVE Producers Webster Stone and Robert Stone have acquired rights to Anthony Bourdain’s crime novel Gone Bamboo for a scripted series based on a pilot. The 1997 book was the celebrity chef’s second published work of fiction.

Set on the island of St. Martin, Gone Bamboo follows sharpshooting hedonistic assassin Henry Denard, who botches a career-capping hit. Denard must enlist the help of his skilled, stunning, and volatile wife to save their skins, dispatch the villains, and keep the peace — at all costs — in their tropical paradise.

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“I wanted to write a sociopath beach book,” writes Bourdain in the book’s introduction. “I wanted a hero and heroine as lazy, mercenary, lustful and free of redeeming qualities as I sometimes see myself.”

The Stone brothers’ producing credits include The Conspirator, Gone in Sixty Seconds and The Negotiator. They’re currently developing the recently published thriller Girl from Nowhere by Tiffany Rosenhan with 42’s Erica Steinberg and Kari Hatfield.

Bourdain, the Stones said, wrote Gone Bamboo after spending a year on St. Martin “while trying to redeem his own botched jobs early in his career.” Publisher’s Weekly wrote about Gone Bamboo, “Following his hilarious first novel, Bone in the Throat, Bourdain establishes himself as a new master of the wiseass crime comedy.”

Bourdain’s third book, Kitchen Confidential, was the basis for the 2005 Darren Star-produced comedy series for Fox Network that starred Bradley Cooper in the role of Bourdain. He was the sole credited writer for all 270 episodes of his three food and travel series: Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown (CNN), Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (Travel Channel) and Anthony Bourdain: The Layover (Travel Channel). In all, he won eight Primetime Emmys.

Bourdain, who died in 2018, also wrote several episodes of David Simon’s HBO series Treme.

Said Robert Stone, “Tony might have had a real career as a crime novelist if those damn travel shows didn’t keep getting in the way.”

Kassie Evashevski and Jessica Calagione of Anonymous Content and Kim Witherspoon, Bourdain’s longtime book agent of Inkwell Literary Management, brokered the Gone Bamboo deal.

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