Triple Frontier, a project that has been in development since 2010, has gone through multiple permutations and crew members, seemingly being back on track or cancelled completely each month. But it might finally have some legs under it.
The crime drama was originally intended to be Kathryn Bigelow‘s follow-up to The Hurt Locker, again written by former journalist Mark Boal. Bigelow and Boal both moved on to other projects after Paramount deemed the production costs for Triple Frontier to be too expensive, and they instead brought on J.C. Chandor to direct.
Johnny Depp was originally in line to star, but that didn’t work out. In January of last year it looked as if things were finally moving in the right direction when Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy were circling the starring roles, but three months later when they both dropped out alongside Paramount, the film fell apart.
The tale continued when in May, when it was reported that Netflix might come to rescue of Chandor’s film with brothers Ben Affleck and Casey Affleck in the lead roles. Then Ben dropped out, and it was back to the drawing board, with Mark Wahlberg touted as a potential replacement.
Phew. That all brings us to today, where THR reports that Ben Affleck is back in negotiations to star in the film – which is now apparently untitled – while Oscar Isaacs, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund are all in talks for roles in what is now a Netflix Original movie.
The original title referred to the border zone between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil which is known as one of the world’s most prominent spots for organised crime. Chandor has reportedly rewritten Boal’s original draft himself, and the story now focuses on five friends whose loyalties are tested when they reunite to take down a South American drug lord.
It looks as if the film finally has a chance to get made, and whatever your opinion is of Netflix Original films, at least they’re giving Chandor a chance to finally make his long-awaited follow up to A Most Violent Year. He had been in line to direct Deepwater Horizon, but left the project late over creative differences; the studio reportedly found his version too political for their tastes.
Whether this now-untitled crime drama will be any good is obviously yet to be seen, but film reporters everywhere will probably be ecstatic to hear that it will finally get made, thereby stopping the multi-year cascade of reporting the numerous cast and crew additions that inevitably seemed to be reversed months later.
#Peace.Love.TripleFrontier
