Sam Mendes to direct Gay Talese's Voyeur's Motel for DreamWorks

DreamWorks knows you like to watch. The studio has acquired film rights to The Voyeur’s Motel, the upcoming nonfiction book from Gay Talese about a Colorado innkeeper who for several decades got his kicks by spying on his guests’ intimate moments, EW has confirmed.

Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty and the James Bond movies Skyfall and Spectre, is on board to helm Motel, and to produce alongside Steven Spielberg.

Though Talese’s book won’t be published until July (by Grove Press), the story already caused a stir thanks to a lengthy excerpt in this week’s issue of the New Yorker. It centers on Gerald Foos, a voyeur who bought a motel so he could secretly watch his guests having sex and also claimed to have witnessed a murder.

Foos first contacted Talese in 1980 and finally agreed to go on public with his story in 2013.

Deadline first reported DreamWorks’ acquisition.