The Tracking Board is reporting that Gore Verbinski (original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, The Cure for Wellness) will direct Sebastian Stan (Captain America: Civil War, I, Tonya) in the thriller Beat the Reaper. The project has been in development at Leonardo DiCaprio’s Appian Way since 2009, and was at one point considered as a starring vehicle for DiCaprio, and then later as an HBO movie.
The protagonist in the novel written by Josh Bazell is a Manhattan emergency room doctor, whose life becomes complicated when a mobster recognizes the doc from his former life as a hitman who went into the witness protection program. Based on that description, there are several shades of A History of Violence to the story.
Screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien (Ocean’s Thirteen, Billions) adapted the book. New Regency, which previously worked with Verbinski on A Cure for Wellness, is partnering with Appian Way on the project, with DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson producing alongside Julie Yorn of LBI Entertainment.
Verbinski recently fell off of 20th Century Fox’s troubled superhero project Gambit, and has the sci-fi thriller Spaceless in development at Universal. Stan will next be seen reprising Bucky Barnes in April’s gargantuan team-up movie Avengers: Infinity War. The busy actor also has the Shirley Jackson adaptation We Have Always Lived in the Castle, war movie The Last Full Measure, and police drama Destroyer all in post, and is currently filming the untitled 4th Avengers movie.
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