IN an unusual alliance of star power George Clooney, the Hollywood actor and producer, is joining forces with John Grisham, the bestselling author, to create films dedicated to exposing miscarriages of justice.

Grisham, who has blocked attempts to turn some of his novels into films, has agreed to let Clooney make one based on his first non-fiction book, The Innocent Man. Sources close to the 51-year-old author say that other films, television dramas and documentaries may follow.

For Grisham, a former lawyer who turned his back on Hollywood after the amazing winning streak that followed the Tom Cruise blockbuster The Firm in 1993, it is a chance to turn books into films on his own terms.

For Clooney, who will direct The Innocent Man, it is a launch pad for his own “mini studio” called Smoke House, reportedly named after a hideaway on his family’s tobacco farm in Kentucky.

The book tells the true story of how Oklahoma police framed a failed baseball player for the murder of a cocktail waitress. He spent 11 years on death row until 1999 when DNA evidence cleared him and a prosecution witness was jailed in his place.

It took months of tough negotiations before Grisham would allow Clooney to work on The Innocent Man, which he regards as a “literary liberation” after years of subtly disguising real events behind some of his best-known novels.

“John gave George a tough time, no mercy, asking detailed questions like the lawyer he was, grilling him for hours over the telephone,” said a business associate last week. “Luckily he liked George’s last film, Good Night, and Good Luck, and came to trust him.”

The associate said that although the men are very different — Clooney is a globetrotting bachelor and Grisham is a family man who lives on a Virginia plantation — they liked one another and had liberal southern views in common.

Between 1983 and 1990, Grisham was a Democrat member of the Mississippi House of Representatives where he pressed for reforms to statutes based on racially biased laws.

Clooney came to his political views through his father, a newscaster who was well known in their native Kentucky. The actor, who is often compared with Cary Grant, has said that he wants to carry on getting paid “big bucks” for such entertainments as the forthcoming Ocean’s Thirteen so he can invest in smaller movies set in the South.

When The Innocent Man is filmed Grisham will be paid more than $1m (£530,00). He said he did not write it just for the money but out of anger at shoddy police and legal work that has ruined so many lives.

Although Grisham has not ruled out writing more legal fiction, which earned him more than £40m a year during the 1990s, he is said to be more interested in writing about baseball.

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