After the unprecedented success of American Sniper, which just recently became the #1 domestic grosser of 2014, Clint Eastwood can have his pick of projects around town, and according to Deadline, the 84-year-old legend is circling Fox’s untitled Richard Jewell project.
The true story of Jewell, an innocent security guard who helped save lives during the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta who was later accused of plotting the attack, has been a hot property based on the purported quality of its screenplay by Billy Ray (Captain Phillips, The Hunger Games). Jonah Hill has long been attached to play Jewell, with his The Wolf of Wall Street cohort Leonardo DiCaprio most likely playing the lawyer who aided him during the media firestorm that painted him as a terrorist. Eric Robert Rudolph plead guilty to the crime, along with several other bombings, in 2005.
Although Eastwood has more clout than ever before, getting the assignment could still be tricky given his decades-long partnership with Warner Bros., and currently the studios are negotiating a possible co-production deal that may-or-may-not come through. This is similar to the situation surrounding Interstellar, where Christopher Nolan’s loyalty to Warners forced Paramount to strike a co-financing agreement.
The Richard Jewell biopic, based on Marie Brenner’s 1997 Vanity Fair article “American Nightmare: The Ballad of Richard Jewell,” will be produced by DiCaprio, Hill, Jennifer Davisson Killoran and Kevin Misher.
