It has now been two full years since Lee Daniels premiered “Precious” at Sundance where it quickly became the film sensation of 2009, coming into the Oscars with six nominations and walking away with two wins for Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. Since then, Daniels has attached himself to a lot of movies — “Anna In The Tropics,” “Nights of Cabiria,” “The Scottsboro Boys,” and most notably “Selma” (which fell apart) — without any managing to get in front of cameras. Now, another gestating film, “The Paperboy,” has lost one of its lead actresses.
Deadline reports that Sofia Vergara has dropped out of the film as the shifting scheduling conflicts with her duties on “Modern Family.” Matthew McConaughey, Tobey Maguire and Zac Efron — announced last month — are presumably still set to go on the independent film, an adaptation of the 1995 Peter Dexter novel that revolves around the two sons of a Florida newspaper magnate, a reporter and a college dropout, and the investigation into a possible miscarriage of justice surrounding a death row inmate convicted of killing the local sheriff.
No word on an exact start date just yet, but it looks like everything is drawing together and this will be Daniels’ next film. Will he court awards season glory again? Only time will tell but he’s got another bunch of great source material and a pretty solid cast to work, with so he’s definitely starting out on the right foot.
