Hot off of his Oscar non-nomination for directing Argo, increasingly beloved on Twitter Hollywood personality Ben Affleck has confirmed that his next project as a director is going to be an adaptation of the Dennis Lehane novel, “Live by Night.” It’s long been thought that this material was one of the things that Affleck planned on working on, but given his now in-demand status as a director, his ongoing acting career, and the time he spends being the center of ridiculous political rumors, it was never quite clear when or if he was going to get around to it.
In a recent interview with MTV [via Coming Soon], however, Matt Damon’s possible best friend revealed that the Lehane adaptation is officially going to be the next thing he works on. In fact, the exact words he used were, “Basically, I’m doing this movie called Live by Night, and I’m trying to meet this schedule in order to do it and meet the back end so I can have it released at the right time.” This tightness in scheduling, it turns out, is the reason he had to drop out of acting opposite Kristen Stewart in Focus.
So what’s Live by Night going to be all about? For the scoop, let’s turn to the novel’s trusty Amazon description, which describes it by saying:
“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.
But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one—neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover—can be trusted. Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt.
Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa’s Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream.”
Sounds sweeping. Now who do we want him to cast as Joe?