Mumbai: Sam Raimi is set to develop and direct Columbia Pictures’ The Given Day, it was announced by Columbia Pictures presidents Doug Belgrad and Matt Tolmach. Raimi will also produce the film with Josh Donen.

The Given Day is based on the forthcoming novel by Dennis Lehane. Lehane’s previous novels, including the New York Times bestselling Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone have been adapted into honored Academy Award-winning films. The Given Day, from Harper Collins, will be published on 23 September.

Tolmach said, "Sam is one of the great directors working today and he is a very important and cherished part of the Sony family. We couldn’t be more excited to be developing this outstanding novel with both him and Josh."

Raimi added, "The Given Day ranks with Lehane’s best work. While it deals with many of the same themes as his earlier work – it is a Dennis Lehane novel – it is also his most ambitious book, tying events of a century ago to the subjects we struggle with today. His readers and film audiences respond to his tense, thought-provoking, and cinematic sense of story, and The Given Day raises the bar."

Set in Boston at the end of WWI, The Given Day tells the story of two families – one black, one white – swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power. Beat cop Danny Coughlin, Boston PD royalty and the son of one of the city’s most beloved and powerful police captains, joins a burgeoning union movement and the hunt for violent radicals. Luther Laurence, on the run after a deadly confrontation with a crime boss in Tulsa, works for the Coughlin family and tries desperately to find his way home to his pregnant wife.

Sam Dickerman will oversee the production for Columbia Pictures. Amy Schiffman of Intellectual Property Group on behalf of Ann Rittenberg of the Ann Rittenberg Agency represented Lehane.