Between Gone Girl, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and The Accountant, Ben Affleck just hasn’t had the time to make his serious follow-up to the Oscar-winning Argo. He’s been struggling to find time to make an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Prohibition-era gangster epic Live By Night for years and has finally found the time to do it.
Live By Night has had a long life already at Warner Bros. The book, which was first published in 2012, was acquired that year by the studio for Leonardo DiCaprio. But DiCaprio fell out of the picture and Affleck became involved in May 2013. The studio initially dreamed of releasing the film on Christmas Day 2015, but it was then pushed back to Oct. 7, 2016 after Affleck was cast as the new Batman.
Amazingly, that is still the release date even though shooting won’t start until this November. Variety reports that Affleck finally got the greenlight to start shooting. Elle Fanning, Zoe Saldana and Sienna Miller all have parts in the film and DiCaprio is still onboard as a producer.
This news about Live By Night was easily overshadowed by the Comic-Con rumor that Affleck will co-write, direct and star in a solo Batman movie. That film will likely not happen until after the Justice League movies and doesn’t have a firm release date set at the moment.
Hopefully, Affleck gets to focus on Live By Night and still make a good movie out of the material. The story centers on Joe Coughlin, a small-time Boston gangster who heads down to Florida to build his own empire after a stint in prison. Variety makes it sound like he is being given plenty of time to work out the script.
Affleck’s first directing effort was Gone Baby Gone, which was also a Lehane adaptation. Lehane’s Mystic River and Shutter Island have also been adapted by filmmakers.
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