Christopher McQuarrie inks deal with United Artists

One week after Tom Cruise’s revamped United Artists made a pact with Paul Haggis, UA has announced a first-look writing, directing, and producing deal with Christopher McQuarrie, the screenwriter who won an Oscar for The Usual Suspects and penned the studio’s upcoming World War II flick Valkyrie, starring Cruise. McQuarrie has been a collaborator of Valkyrie director Bryan Singer, a childhood friend, on several projects, and he wrote and directed the 2000 crime thriller The Way of the Gun. He also plans to direct the true-life drama The Stanford Prison Experiment, which he cowrote.