‘Caught Stealing’: Austin Butler To Star In Darren Aronofsky’s ’90s NYC Crime Pic At Sony

Having directed Brendan Fraser to a Best Actor Oscar in his last film, “The Whale,” filmmaker Darren Aronofsky is setting his sights on his next project. A crime thriller called “Caught Stealing,” based on the book penned by Charlie Huston, the project has landed a rising young actor. The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Austin Butler, hot off the massive global success of “Dune: Part Two” and his own Best Actor Oscar nomination for “Elvis,” is set to take a lead part as a former baseball player in the crime drama.

“Caught Stealing” is set in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the 1990s, a perfect backdrop for a filmmaker like Aronofsky, who already covered some of these similar seedier elements in his “Requiem For A Dream” drug addiction drama in 2000.

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An official synopsis for the Huston book published in 2024 from Amazon reads as follows:

It’s three thousand miles from the green fields of glory, where Henry “call me Hank” Thompson once played California baseball, to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the tenements are old, the rents are high, and the drunks are dirty. But now Hank is here, working as a bartender and taking care of a cat named Bud, who will surely get him killed. It begins when Hank’s neighbor, Russ, has to leave town in a rush and hands over Bud in a carrier. But it isn’t until two Russians in tracksuits drag Hank over the bar at the joint where he works and beat him to a pulp that he starts to get the idea: Someone wants something from him. He just doesn’t know what it is, where it is, or how to make them understand he doesn’t have it. Within twenty-four hours, Hank is running over rooftops, swinging his old aluminum bat for the sweet spot of a guy’s head, playing hide and seek with the NYPD, riding the subway with a dead man at his side, and counting a whole lot of cash on a concrete floor.

This movie isn’t the only high-profile film that Bulter has attached himself to, as he’s set to lead the feature adaptation of the Don Winslow crime saga “City On Fire” (we’re awaiting an announcement about a director and supporting cast for the potential franchise starter). Currently, Butler is shooting Ari Aster’s latest film, “Eddington,” in which he co-stars alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone, Pedro Pascal, and more.

His next theatrical release is the biker period drama “The Bikeriders,” directed by Jeff Nichols. Tom Hardy and Jodie Comer also appear alongside the actor, and the movie is due in theaters on June 21.