It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a whopping 14 years since Matt Damon and Ben Affleck became superstars with Good Will Hunting. And while they worked together again in Dogma and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (despite what some bloggers think) they’ve been neglecting us for far too long.
Well pine no longer, because they’re back together for a movie about Whitey Bulger. Hey, wasn’t The Departed already about Whitey Bulger?
“We’re doing a Whitey Bulger movie,” Damon says of the leader of South Boston’s Winter Hill Gang, who had been on the lam for 16 years and was wanted for 19 murders, among other things, when he was apprehended in Santa Monica in June. “Warner’s got it for us.”
Damon will star as Bulger, Affleck will direct, and Terence Winter, of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire fame, is writing the script. Last year, Damon and Affleck cemented a first-look deal with Warner Bros., where their production company is now based.(Via GQ)
Damon and Affleck had earlier been rumored to be reuniting for The Trade, the true story of two New York Yankees pitchers in the 1970s who swapped wives, but according to GQ, development has been hampered by legal challenges (not to mention the obvious hurdle of two Boston guys doing a movie about the Yankees). But of course, it wouldn’t be the Hollywood way to have only one Whitey Bulger project in development. Why, this is a story hot off the presses, that has only been tackled in a wildly successful and critically-acclaimed film once before!
Previously announced Bulger projects include:
– One from producer Graham King, who won the Best Picture Oscar for another Damon film, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, which depicted a character based on Bulger (played by Jack Nicholson). King has reportedly acquired the rights of the Winter Hill Gang’s chief enforcer, John Martorano.
– Another project, which borrows its title from the Bulger book Black Mass by Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, is reportedly in the works from producer Brian Oliver.
– And actor Peter Facinelli, perhaps best known for the Twilight Saga, is said to be producing an adaptation of Edward MacKenzie and Phyllis Karas’s book Street Soldier: My Life as an Enforcer for Whitey Bulger and the Boston Irish Mob.
Asked about what he knew of Bulger, Facinelli said, “He was a man, duhhhhhhhhh.” …Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.
Vince’s Note: “Whitey Bulger” was my nickname down at the sex offender registry. An alias, some might call it.