Nordling here.
Remember in JACKIE BROWN when Ordell (Samuel Jackson) told Louis (Robert DeNiro), after having shot him, "What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful." Well, we're going to get to see just how beautiful Louis's ass was, because a prequel to JACKIE BROWN, called SWITCH, is happening, and Ordell will be played by Yasiin Bey - or as you may know him, Mos Def - while Louis will be played by John Hawkes.
The characters of Ordell Robie and Louis Gara are Elmore Leonard's, and in 1978 Leonard published THE SWITCH, which had Ordell and Louis, 15 years before the events of JACKIE BROWN (or RUM PUNCH, Leonard's novel), teaming up to kidnap the wife of a real estate broker. But the broker refuses to pay for her release, so she plots against her husband, with Ordell and Louis caught in the middle. According to Variety, Dan Schechter loved the book so much he wrote a spec script and submitted it to his agent, without Leonard's permission. But the script made its way to Leonard, who apparently loved it so much he decided to help produce the film. That almost never happens in Hollywood - imagine if George Lucas saw a bit of fan fiction he liked and hired the writer to pen the next STAR WARS.
SWITCH will start shooting in May. Quentin Tarantino doesn't appear to be involved in any way, but I'd be very interested in hearing what he had to say. If the script was good enough to impress Elmore Leonard into getting involved, that's good enough for me.
