Director Craig Gillespie is reportedly circling a project called “Butter,” which Jennifer Garner has just been attached to produce and star.
“Butter” tells the story of adopted girl who learns of her uncanny talent to carve butter. She then finds herself dueling with the reigning annual butter-sculpting contest champion of her Midwestern hometown. As weird as it sounds, the project sounds like it’s right up Gillespie’s alley. His debut feature “Lars And The Real Girl” was about a young man’s love affair with a blow-up doll while he has recently been helming the Diablo Cody-scribed Showtime series “United States of Tara,” which chronicles a mother’s struggle with odd multiple personalities.
‘Butter’ was penned by first timer writer Jason Micallef and was third on The Black List of 2008, a list of the industry’s favorite not-yet-produced scripts. Micallef gained inspiration for the script during a five-hour detour on a post-college road trip in the hot August sun that led him to a refrigerated building at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines that housed prized butter sculptures. Regarding the film’s motives, Micallef added: “I wanted to do a political satire and I was looking for some venue that people take very seriously but is also ridiculous, like politics, but at the same time is really visual.”
Gillespie is currently attached to direct his ‘Lars’ lead Ryan Gosling in “The Dallas Buyer’s Club.” Garner, meanwhile, will this year be seen in Ricky Gervais’ “This Side Of The Truth” and the Matthew McConaughey-led “The Ghosts Of Girlfriend Past.”