Sandberg Launching 'Torpedo'

Producer Paul Sandberg has optioned first-time novelist Jeff Edwards's award-winning actioner Torpedo.

The book is a modern-day technological sea-chase thriller revolving around a handful of U.S. Navy destroyers that must track down a wolfpack of state-of-the-art submarines whose passengers might have been responsible for a biological attack in Washington. Story continues below ?

Last month, Torpedo won the Admiral Nimitz Award for Outstanding Naval Fiction from the Military Writers Society of America.

Edwards had plenty experience to draw upon for his novel. He is a recently retired U.S. Navy chief petty officer and an anti-submarine warfare specialist whose career had him chasing Soviet subs in the Cold War and launching cruise missiles during the Gulf War.

Sandberg produced Universal's The Bourne Supremacy with Frank Marshall and Patrick Crowley. The trio are developing the latest in the saga, The Bourne Ultimatum, which Tony Gilroy is writing. Sandberg also is developing The Sigma Protocol, also at Universal, with writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris and recently commenced preproduction on CBS' The Hades Factor miniseries.

Edwards is repped by book agent Henry Morrison in New York.