Here’s a good sign of momentum: weeks after a documentary premiered at Sundance and received its first wave of fine reviews, the figure known as JT Leroy is having their life story turned into a feature film. THR tell us Kristen Stewart, James Franco, Helena Bonham Carter, and writer-director Justin Kelly (the Franco-led I Am Michael) will team for JT Leroy, which examines the eponymous figure — itself the outlet for a writer and actor who fooled the world with “a man who identifies as transgender, tricking the rich and famous in Hollywood, the fashion world and elite literary circles.”
If contracts are arranged, Carter and Stewart will respectively star as Laura Albert and Savannah Knoop, Leroy’s writing and public personas. There are many directions in which this narrative can reach, evidenced by the fact that writer-director-actress Asia Argento, who adapted Leroy’s The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, is in Kelly’s screenplay on account of her romance with Knoop. Seeing how they cast that role should be fun — possibly more entertaining than the final film, which LBI Entertainment, Aquarius, and Rabbit Bandini are supporting and hope to have in production this year.
Meanwhile, Deadline tell us Pablo Trapero will follow this year’s El Clan with (presumably) his English-language debut, having boarded Fox Searchlight’s The Man in the Rockefeller Suit. Based on Mark Seal‘s non-fiction book, and scripted by David Bar Katz (the John Leguizamo-led classic The Pest), the picture follows Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who climbed Wall Street’s social and career ladders by pretending to be Clark Rockefeller, a member of the prestigious family. Carrying a very dark past and having tumultuous days ahead of him — spoiler: he’s serving 27-to-life for various charges, including first-degree murder — Gerhartsreiter’s story is probably a neat fit for a filmmaker who prefers exploring dark material.
Deadline also tell us that The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos has lined up a new project titled The Killing Of A Sacred Deer. Described as a “psychological thriller with supernatural elements,” the plot follows “a young man that needs to take revenge, a doctor that has to make a decision, and his family that must survive.” Considering no cast has been set yet, it will likely come after The Favourite, his period drama starring Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz.
Finally, Variety/THR provide an update on Collateral Beauty, which was once a Me and Earl and the Dying Girl follow-up for Alfonso Gomez-Rejon starring Hugh Jackman, Rooney Mara, and Jason Segel. It’s now in the hands of David Frankel (Hope Springs, The Devil Wears Prada) and will star Will Smith, Kate Winslet, Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Edward Norton, Michael Peña, and Naomie Harris.
These shifts notwithstanding, the set-up sounds similar to what we’d heard last summer: as scripted by Allan Loeb (San Andreas, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), Collateral Beauty concerns “a successful New York advertising executive who experiences a personal tragedy and retreats from life entirely, prompting his colleagues to devise a drastic plan to help him recover.” Although shooting kicks off in March, New Line aren’t expected to release the picture until December 16, 2017.