In just a few short months, Clint Eastwood will spend the last day of May celebrating his 80th birthday. 80th. In the last year, he’s seen the release of “Invictus,” and wrapped up his next picture, the supernatural drama “Hereafter.” What did you do in the last year? And the veteran actor/director shows no sign of letting up either, as he’s already lined up his next project.
Eastwood is set to direct a biopic of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, for Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment. We wrote about this only a few days ago, as Pajiba broke the news that “Milk” scribe Dustin Lance Black would be penning the script, but in that time Eastwood has become attached. Universal put the project in turnaround, so it’s currently without a studio, but The Hollywood Reporter thinks that it may well end up at Warner Bros., Eastwood’s long time home.
Hoover, who was played by Bob Hoskins in Oliver Stone’s “Nixon,” and by Billy Crudup in last summer’s Michael Mann semi-misfire “Public Enemies,” was and is a controversial figure — director of the FBI for nearly 40 years, he’s best known for his founding of the “dirty tricks” program COINTELPRO, which investigated organizations from the Ku Klux Klan to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and for the frequent rumors regarding his possible homosexuality.
He’s clearly a fascinating figure, and the pairing of the conservative-leaning Eastwood, and the openly gay Dustin Lance Black seems to set up a potentially fascinating dichotomy, one allegedly present in the man himself. It’s not a pairing we’d have imagined this time yesterday, but, despite our mixed feelings about most of Eastwood’s recent work, we’re positively chomping at the bit to see it. There’s no word yet on whether the project will look at the sweep of Hoover’s career, or focus on certain aspects. We imagine that, with “Hereafter” still in post, and no studio deal currently in place, that it’s unlikely to get rolling before the end of the year, but Eastwood does work at an amazing pace and the THR piece suggests that the screenplay is already complete. All he needs to do is cast Toby Jones in the lead role and it’s in the bag…
