The story follows on from two residents who die under suspicious circumstances in a high-end luxury retirement community. Retired detective Joe Mulwray (Freeman) is pulled back into the action by his former partner William Keys (DeVito), and they uncover a hidden underworld of sex, drugs, and murder in the wealthy community controlled by kingpin Harvey Stride (Pacino), and his femme fatale enforcer, The Spider (Mirren). Sniff is an acronym for Senior Nursing Institute & Family Foundation.
Penned by Tom Grey, Adam Goodman, and Matt Skiena will produce through their Dichotomy Creative Group, along with Hackford through his Anvil Films production shingle. Grey will be the executive producer.
“I have always been a big fan of film noir but haven’t really made one,” Hackford said via Deadline. “The whole concept of setting a film noir in an upscale retirement community… These are proliferating all over the United States as the baby boomer generation gets to retirement. There’s a lot of money, and people want to live in a beautiful setting. Those are on the brochures, but what Tom Grey did was show what was lurking below the surface.”
Hackford added, “I thought it was a brilliant idea and he understood the nature of good noir — the dark story, the incredibly twisted characters — and I thought he had a great handle. Adam and Matt said, ‘It’s yours if you want to run with it.’ I met the writer, Tom Grey, we clicked and worked on it together, him writing and me putting ideas in.”
