Ben Affleck To Star In And Direct ‘Argo,’ Won’t Do ‘The Great Gatsby’
After the unexpected success ofThe Town,Ben Affleckfound himself in the unique position of being an extremely hot director. Since then, he’s been circling or offered several different directorial projects includingAmerican Bullshit,ReplayandTales From The Gangster Squadbut had yet to settle on his follow-up. That’s now changed.As was rumored back in February, Affleck’s next directorial effort will beArgo, a spy film based on the true story of how the CIA rescued American citizens from Tehran, Iran by pretending to make a sci-fi movie. He’ll both direct and reportedly star in the film, produced byGeorge ClooneyandGrant Heslovfrom a script byChris Terrio.Because he’s committing to this, Affleckwon’t be able to star inBaz Luhrman’sThe Great Gatsby. Read more after the break.
The Hollywood Reporterbroke the news of Affleck being in talksa few months back, but theArgoconfirmation is fromThe Tracking Boardwith a little nudge fromDeadline. The Tracking Board says Affleck will star in the film while everyone else says he’s just directing. He’s also still developing additional projects such as thetrue life baseball story,The Trade, with Matt Damon.Argois based on a 2007 article that ran inWiredmagazine called “How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran” by Joshuah Bearman. The true story itself happened in 1979 and here’show it was describedby its author:
You can read the story itselfright here.
In ourinitial article on this film(which has a bunch of addition details), Russ gushed about the possibilities of these pieces falling into place. The story, the filmmaker, the period, etc. I tend to agree that it sounds incredibly rich and interesting but am a tad bit worried that audiences might be slightly off put by the period feel of it. It seems to be like Soderbergh’sThe Informant, which was great, but failed to connect with general audiences.
After directing two successful films, do you buy Affleck as a talented auteur? Should he stick behind the camera?
