It’s not easy to bounce back from a box office flop and major league misfire like “Pan,” but Joe Wright has not only done that, he’s put himself in the Oscar race with “Darkest Hour.” And striking while the iron is hot, he’s quickly setting up his next project.
Casey Affleck, fresh off his Oscar for “Manchester By The Sea,” has signed up to star in “Stoner,” which will be directed by Wright. And no, the movie isn’t about what you think it is. Instead, it’s based on the book by John Williams (not the composer), about William Stoner, a dirt-poor farmer turned academic, who emerges as an unlikely existential hero while making his way through the first half of the 20th Century. Here’s the synopsis of the novel:
William Stoner is born at the end of the nineteenth century into a dirt-poor Missouri farming family. Sent to the state university to study agronomy, he instead falls in love with English literature and embraces a scholar’s life, so different from the hardscrabble existence he has known. And yet as the years pass, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments: marriage into a “proper” family estranges him from his parents; his career is stymied; his wife and daughter turn coldly away from him; a transforming experience of new love ends under threat of scandal. Driven ever deeper within himself, Stoner rediscovers the stoic silence of his forebears and confronts an essential solitude.
This is not going to be a feel good time, but the book is considered a modern classic, so count us as intrigued. The unlikely team up of Cohen Media Group, Film4, and Blumhouse (who are best known for low budget horrors like “The Purge” and “Get Out“) are bringing “Stoner” to life, in what’s already being tipped as an Oscar movie. No word yet on when production might start, but presumably after Wright does the awards season gauntlet this fall.
