There was mention of the project yesterday on Production Weekly’s feed, but now Deadline has the full scoop on Ami Canaan Mann’s directorial debut, The Fields. The drama, which stars Sam Worthington (Avatar, Clash of the Titans) is “based on a true story of a pair of detectives investigating a series of unsolved murders in a stretch of bayous near the oil refineries in coastal Texas where as many as 70 bodies have turned up over the past 30 years.” Don Ferrarone, a former top DEA operations wrote the script. Ferrarone has worked with Mann on Miami Vice and also has produced Bad Boys II, Man on Fire, Deja Vu, and The Taking of Pelham 123. Michael Mann, who is also producing the film, talked to Mike Fleming at Deadline and had this to say:

“Sam read it, met Ami, and he was in. And for me, this is a dream come true to enable Ami to do this. Sam will play Jake, this tough-minded misanthropic Texan, who with his partner Brian wind up waging something of a war against these unknown assailants, a ferocious battle to save each other and the life of this young street kid.”

On the script:

It took time to get it right and for it to come together in this incarnation. It’s a brilliant screenplay, filled with things you cannot make up in Hollywood, things you would have had to find the dead bodies in a heroin operation to understand. That’s why it’s such a haunting piece. This is such a spooky zone in Texas where cell phones don’t work, where the homes sit on trailer stilts, and where there’s a hand-painted sign on the bridge that reads, `You Are Now Entering the Cruel World’.

The Fields starts shooting April 5 in Louisiana.

What do you think about director’s children following in the footsteps?