Remember when Ben Affleck was a joke in Hollywood? Yeah, that was a long time ago and now he is one of the best young directors working today. Look at Gone Baby Gone, The Town and Argo and you see a director getting better and better as time goes on. He has optioned his next movie to helm and it is the Dennis Lehane novel Live by Night.
Click here to buy the novel from Amazon
This is Affleck’s second adaptation of a Lehane novel, after Gone Baby Gone, and it also brings Affleck back to Boston, a common trait for both he and Lehane. The movie heads back to the Prohibition era and tells the story of a cop’s son who gets involved with organized crime and rises to power. It takes place in the mid-20s and travels from Boston to Cuba to Florida.
Affleck will also star in the movie in an undefined role and pre-production has already begun. Affleck hopes to start the actual production on the film in August or September and hopefully have it in theaters in 2014.
Boston, 1926. The ’20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city’s most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw.
Source: Deadline
