On November 30, 2006, it was reported that George Clooney was set to star in a newly green-lit film adaptation of the novel for Warner Independent Pictures. Clooney was also on board as producer along with his Smoke House partner Grant Heslov. The film was to be written by Matthew Michael Carnahan and directed by his brother Joe Carnahan. Both Jason Bateman and Peter Berg had signed on to appear in the film. The script changes the Armenian Kafesjian family in the novel to the Mexican Magdalena family. Joe Carnahan said this of his brother's script, "It's, to me, what that book always was – the point of departure from the Eisenhower '50s to the psychedelic freakshow, Manson '60s. It's a total combination of the two with a heavy, heavy voice-over narration, this kind of classic noir." Carnahan had also confirmed that the characters of Ed Exley and Dudley Smith would not be in the film version despite their presence in the book, as Regency Productions has its own plans for a sequel to "L.A. Confidential" and asked the director to remove Exley from his screenplay as they own the rights to the character. Instead, the Carnahans had constructed a "doppelganger" for Exley, "giving him all of traits and speech patterns."