JAY ROACH TO DIRECT ACTION COMEDY ‘MAD DOGS’ FOR WARNER BROS.

Dan Lin (‘The Lego Movie’) is on board to produce the adaptation of the novel from ‘Six Days of the Condor’ author James Grady.

Warner Bros. has picked up Mad Dogs, an action-comedy package that adapts a novel from Six Days of the Condor author James Grady.

Jay Roach is attached to direct the project while Wes Jones, a well-regarded screenwriter whose script College Republicans topped the 2010 Black List, will pen the adaptation.

Dan Lin, who produced the award-winning The Lego Movie with Roy Lee, is on board to produce via his Lin Pictures banner. The company’s Mark Bauch will executive produce.

Using the book as a jumping-off point, the story centers on three dysfunctional guys working low-level jobs in U.S. Intelligence who have been deemed crazy and sent to a government mental hospital for spies. Convinced someone wants them dead, they hatch an escape plan. It’s obvious they know too much but their only hope to survive is to figure out what exactly it is that they know.

The plan is to do an action-comedy update of the 1970s conspiracy genre in a tone that blends The Hangover with One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

Execs Jesse Ehrman and Nik Mavinkurve will oversee for Warners.

Grady’s Six Days of the Condor was given the Hollywood treatment in 1975 when it was adapted as Three Days of the Condor, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford, becoming a benchmark in the conspiracy thriller genre.

Lin has Stephen King’s It in development at New Line with Cary Fukunaga directing.

Roach began his career as a comedy director (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Meet the Parents) before going on to make more dramatic fare such as Recount. He is currently in post with Trumbo, the biopic centering on ostracized scriptwriter Dalton Trumbo starring Bryan Cranston.

Jones and Roach are currently working on The Brink, an HBO political comedy that stars Jack Black and Tim Robbins. Roach is directing while Jones is a story editor on the show, which will premiere later this year.

Jones is repped by CAA and Circle of Confusion. Roach is repped by WME, Mosaic and Behr & Abramson.