Angelina Jolie is reportedly in talks to star in writer-director Taylor Sheridan‘s next feature film, Those Who Wish Me Dead. Sheridan has previously written the screenplays for films such as Sicario and Hell Or High Water, before also moving into directing with 2017’s Wind River.
Based on the bestselling novel by Michael Koryta, Those Who Wish Me Dead is a hard-boiled chase thriller set against the backdrop of a wildfire in the Montana wilderness. It revolves around a 14 year-old boy who witnesses a brutal murder and enters a federal protection program that involves teaching him survival skills.
Those skills come in handy when the two killers he witnessed come after him, with only a few people standing between them and the boy; a couple who run the wilderness survival program, and a woman who occupies a lonely fire lookout tower. There is no word on which role Jolie will be playing, but either one half of the couple or the woman occupying the lookout tower would make sense.
This news comes as a surprise to some as Sheridan had been reportedly planning a project with Chris Pratt. Last October, Pratt was supposedly in talks to star in a Sheridan thriller with the working title of Fast, in which he would play a former special forces commando who is recruited by the DEA to lead a black ops strike team which targets drug dealers protected by the CIA.
Warner Bros. had been reluctant to greenlight the project which would have cost them around $75 million until a major star was brought in. Many assumed that with Pratt on board, the project was a go and that it could lead to another franchise for the Guardians Of The Galaxy star. However, Fast has reportedly hit an unknown snag and stalled in development.
Thus it seems as if Sheridan is moving forward with a totally different project instead. If Jolie officially signs on, this will be one of the few films she’s currently got in the pipeline. One is Maleficent 2, another is the animated film The One And Only Ivan, and the third is the indie drama Come Away, which serves as a sort of prequel to the stories of Peter Pan and Alice In Wonderland.
So it’s clear that Jolie is picking her projects carefully nowadays, so getting her on board is a coup for Sheridan, and hopefully means the script is a great one. Production on Those Who Wish Me Dead is slated to begin in May after Sheridan wraps filming on the second season of his TV drama, Yellowstone.
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