Last April, we talked to Sacha Gervasi, the director of “Anvil! The Story Of Anvil.”
He then told us about his next project, or rather the one he had written that was being made next. It was a picture called, “Henry’s Crime” and Keanu Reeves has already been cast as the lead.
“It’s a twisted, romantic comedy, very dark and funny and Keanu is the lead,” Gervasi told The Playlist five months ago. “[He] plays a Buffalo toll both attendant in the middle of an existential crisis,” he said, adding the project had crime and heist drama proclivities as well as well as allusions to Anton Chekov.
Gervasi told us the film was looking to shoot in the fall and they were eyeing and discussing directors, but wasn’t at liberty to say who quite yet. Now the trades are getting into the action and they validate all of our report. Shooting is starting in November and Malcolm Venville will direct. Venille is known for the drama, “44 Inch Chest” which has yet to come out, but was said to hit theaters in 2009 (to be completely honest, we’re not even sure it has distribution yet, but the talent surrounding that one is hot: “Sexy Beast” writers Louis Mellis and David Scinto, plus Ray Winstone and Tom Wilkinson).
Deal Memo calls the film “Capra-esque romantic comedy in which Reeves will play a big-hearted man who is falsely accused of robbing a bank in Buffalo.” Reeves is also producing. Nikki Finke would say… nah, that ain’t really us.
Gervasi himself is developing his long-gestating “My Dinner With Herve,” a biopic of the “Fantasy Island” little guy, Richardo Montalban’s sidekick Herve Villechaize. Diminutive actor Peter Dinklage is said to have the lead. Last we heard, Gervasi was giving the script another polish and had hoped to shoot in the fall as well, but we haven’t heard any updates there yet either.