Ben Affleck is certainly popular in Hollywood at the moment with the rise of his directing career, which must feel good after several years when his reputation as a major actor was on the skids. Earlier this week it was revealed he was thinking about starring in a movie called Focus, and now Deadline reports that he’s considering directing an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, Live By Night.
Affleck has already shown an affinity with Lehane’s work, launching his directing career with an adaptation of the author’s Gone Baby Gone (Lehane also wrote Mystic River and Shutter Island). The brand new book is set during the Prohibition era in Affleck’s hometown of Boston and follows Joe Coughlin, who’s desribed as ‘the black sheep son of a police captain’, as he slowly moves up the ranks of organised crime.
Warner Bros has the rights, and interestingly some of the characters in Live By Night appeared in Lehane’s previous novel, The Given Day. As the studio also has the rights to that book, there’s a chance they’re plannning linked films based on them.