Clint Eastwood wants to direct Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill’s Richard Jewell movie
The ’90s are back! Deadline reports that Rawhide star Clint Eastwood is in talks to simply set up a camera and let it run for Fox’s untitled movie about Richard Jewell, the heroic security guard who discovered a suspicious backpack in the Olympics compound during the 1996 games in Atlanta. Misidentified as a possible suspect in the wake of the bombings, Jewell underwent a trial by media that took its toll on his professional and personal life; he was exonerated when the actual perpetrator, Eric Robert Rudolph, was identified.
Eastwood has his pick of projects after American Sniper became the top-grossing movie of 2014, but he’s always been loyal to Warner Bros. But Fox and Warner Bros. are willing to negotiate in order to make the project happen, with Eastwood in talks with empty chairs from each studio in an attempt to expedite the process. (Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass has also been circling the project, presumably with the intent of giving audiences motion sickness.)
Jonah Hill is set play Jewell, with Eastwood favorite Leonardo DiCaprio as the southern lawyer who helped Jewell navigate the fallout of the case. The fake baby from American Sniper is in talks to play the backpack. The film would reunite DiCaprio and Hill for the first time since they were robbed of the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars, respectively, for The Wolf Of Wall Street.