A few months ago it was revealed that Oliver Stone was planning to take on Savages, an adaptation of Don Winslow’s bestselling book. Now he’s looking to cast the project, with Deadline reporting that up-and-comer Jennifer Lawrence is close to signing on for the film.
It’s a good idea for Stone to catch her now, as at the moment she’s still not that well known, but with an Oscar nomination for Winter’s Bone, and X-Men: First Class, The Beaver and Like Crazy out this year, she’s about to become a much bigger deal.
She’d play Ophelia (known as O), the wild child girlfiend shared by two pot dealers, Ben and Chon. However when the guys resist being muscled by a Mexican drug cartel, the girl is kidnapped and the ransom is every cent they’ve made for the last five years. They agree to pay but hatch an alternate plan to get her back, get revenge, and then get lost.
Deadline also reports that Stone is looking at the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Aaron Johnson, Tom Hardy, James Franco and Garrett Hedlund to play Ben and Chon, while he’s also courting Benicio Del Toro for the role of an Mexican drug cartel enforcer sent to muscle Ben and Chon out of business. There’s no news on how close any of these guys are to signing, or even if they’ve met with the director yet.
Winslow wrote the first version of the script, with Shane Salerno coming in to take over. Several studios are now courting the independently developed movie, with a distribution and funding deal expected to be sorted soon.