Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series highlighting the scripts behind the awards season’s buzziest films continues with The Order, Justin Kurzel‘s period crime drama based on a chilling and timely true story. The screenplay was written by Oscar-nominated King Richard scribe Zach Baylin.
The film starring Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Jurnee Smollett has been hitting the fall festival circuit beginning with its world premiere at Venice. It has since opened the Zurich and Marrakesh film festivals and hit theaters in limited release this past weekend via Vertical.
Baylin’s script, adapted from the book The Silent Brotherhood by Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, centers on a string of violent robberies and other crimes beginning in the early 1980s Pacific Northwest that the FBI, and specifically veteran agent Terry Husk (Law), figured out were being perpetrated by a white supremacist group plotting to overthrow the government. Husk and his team followed the trail to the group’s leader Jim Mathews (Hoult), with a cat-and-mouse game leading to an ultimately bloody showdown.
In real life, Mathews, a Mormon survivalist, had formed the splinter group The Order after splitting with the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation, disappointed the latter group wasn’t advancing its agenda quickly enough. Their heists, some done in broad daylight, helped amass a $4 million war chest to fund their growing militia. As they researched, Baylin and producer Bryan Haas saw the parallels to the current rise of white nationalism around the world and in the U.S., developing the screenplay with that front of mind. Kurzel said he got the script three months before the January 6, 2021 attack at the U.S. Capitol.
Baylin, who also co-wrote Creed III, Gran Turismo and most recently Bob Marley: One Love, is reteaming with Kurzel and Law on the upcoming limited series Black Rabbit, written by Baylin and his wife Kate Susman and starring Law and Jason Bateman.
Until then, read Baylin’s The Order script below.
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