The 'Lost City of Z' director will bring the Terry Hayes espionage novel franchise to the big screen.


James Gray is set to direct the terrorism thriller I Am Pilgrim, an adaptation of Terry Hayes' spy novel franchise, for MGM, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.


Gray replaces Kingsman: The Secret Service helmer Matthew Vaughn, who was earlier attached to the project to keep MGM in the spy game after its success with the James Bond franchise.


Screenwriter/director Gray is also known for movies like Little Odessa and The Yards. Among his other upcoming projects is New Regency's Ad Astra, a sci-fi epic starring Brad Pitt, Tommy Lee Jones, Ruth Negga and Donald Sutherland.


Based on 2014's mammoth best-seller, the story for I Am Pilgrim follows "Pilgrim,” the code name for a man who doesn’t exist. The adopted son of a wealthy American family, he once headed up a secret espionage unit for U.S. intelligence. Now in anonymous retirement, he is called upon to lend his expertise to an unusual investigation but ultimately becomes caught in a terrifying race against time to save America from a cunning terrorist.


Hayes, an accomplished screenwriter whose credits include Payback, Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior and Dead Calm, adapted the novel — his first — which MGM envisions as a franchise. In addition to landing on U.S. best-seller lists including that of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, I Am Pilgrim has been translated into more than 30 languages and was a massive best-seller in Vaughn's native U.K.


MGM's Andrew Mittman is serving as executive producer, and the film is being overseen by Adam Rosenberg, executive vp production, for MGM.