Retirement On The Horizon, Author Don Winslow Sets Early Mystery Series ‘The Gentlemen’s Hour’ & ‘The Dawn Patrol’ At Netflix; Charlène Favier To Direct Pics

Mike Fleming Jr
·3 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Netflix is adapting bestselling author Don Winslow’s novels The Dawn Patrol and The Gentlemen’s Hours for features. Charlène Favier is aboard to direct, with Chernin Entertainment and The Story Factory’s Shane Salerno producing. They are out to high level writers to script the film.

The deal comes as Winslow just released City on Fire, the first in a trilogy that he announced will be his swan song from novel writing after a long career of bestsellers. He has numerous film and TV deals for his other works. The City on Fire series was acquired by Sony Pictures and Elizabeth Gabler’s 3000 label for north of $5 million. Winslow also has The Border about to begin production as an FX series, after Fox acquired it for $6 million. Winslow separately set his Neal Carey novels with Knives Out helmer Rian Johnson for MRC and Peacock, and has the novel Satori in the works at Warner Bros with Appian Way. His other novels include The Cartel, The Force, The Border and Savages.

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Published in 2008, The Dawn Patrol focuses on Boone Daniels, and I reached out to Winslow to describe what this movie will be. Here goes:

“Boone Daniels handles the toughest cases in the most beautiful place in the world.

When you need something the PD can’t or won’t do, the San Diego ex-cop-turned-investigator is your go-to guy.

Better go down to the beach rather than put in a call, though, because you’re far more likely to find Boone out on a board than in his office. Boone works as an investigator just enough to keep himself afloat.

Boone lives to surf.

He and his crew, glossed ‘The Dawn Patrol,’ usually ride the break alongside Crystal Pier. Boone’s friends are more like his family: Dave the Love God (an appropriate take on his profession as a lifeguard and his extracurriculars); Johnny Banzai, the hard-charging Japanese-American homicide investigator; High Tide, the 360-lb Samoan; Hang Twelve, the neo-hippie soul surfer who has six toes on each foot; and Boone’s on-and-off-again love interest Sunny Day, the best surfer of the bunch.

Then there’s Cheerful, the ornery billionaire who has made it his personal mission to straighten out Boone’s always precarious finances. And Red Eddie, the Hawaiian/Portuguese/Chinese/Mexican Harvard and Wharton graduate gangster who owes Boone for saving his son’s life.

So this is Boone’s life in San Diego, where it’s always 83 degrees, the water is always blue, the food always good, the people always beautiful and bad trouble is always brewing right under the gorgeous surface.

And Boone has this thing about justice, and about sticking up for people who can’t stick up for themselves.

It’s the Code.

The Cowboy Code, the Surfer Code, Boone’s Code: You don’t start trouble, but you finish it. When you jump into a wave, you ride it to the end.”

Favier directed the 2020 drama Slalom. The French filmmaker is repped by Range, and Winslow by The Story Factory and CAA.

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