John Hillcoat’s The Wettest Country In The World Interests Johansson, Dano, Gosling And More
John Hillcoat’s adaptation of theMatt BondurantnovelThe Wettest County in the Worldisn’t happening yet. It was set up at Columbia for some time, but put into turnaround by the studio. Now producersDouglas WickandLucy Fisher(who didJarheadandMemoirs of a Geishaand are working on Nicolas Winding Refn’sJekyllat Universal) are trying to make the film work as an indie. Because there is interest from a bevy of young stars (including, ahem,Shia LaBeouf) it might actually happen.The Wettest County in the Worldsounds like a fantastic story and a perfect project for Hillcoat. It’s based on the story of Bondurant’s own grandfather and great-uncles, who ran a depression-era moonshine/bootlegging business. There’s also a parallel thread, where a reporter is tracking the gang and reporting on bootlegging while researching a novel. The Publisher’s Weekly synopsis gives a few more details and makes the whole shebang sound like quite a nice little concoction:
With material like that and a director like Hillcoat, is it any wonder that a host of talent is interested in taking a swig?THRreports that LaBeouf,Scarlett JohanssonandRyan Gosling’s names have all been thrown around in conjunction with the film, and thatPaul DanoandMichael Shannonare also said to be interested. Not hard to see how almost all of those folks could be great in a story like this. Granted, none of these people are attached, much less signed. But this producing team isn’t exactly a Mickey Mouse operation, and while they could throw around a bunch of young names to drum up interest, it seems unlikely that they’d do so without justification.
Regardless, this film isn’t necessarily Hillcoat’s next. He has a handful of possible pictures lined up,as we reported recently. Given the fact that this one was in turnaround, it was previously looking low-priority. But ifThe Roadpicks up a bit more critical momentum and more talent gets interested inWettest County, priorities could change and we might see this bootlegging run sooner rather than later.
