Oscar winners Morgan Freeman and Tommy Lee Jones will star in Villa Capri, an action comedy written by and to be directed by Ron Shelton, the filmmaker behind movies such as Bull Durhamand White Men Can’t Jump.
Bill Gerber and Steve Richards are producing with Richards’ banner Endurance Media financing along with eOne.
Sierra/Affinity is launching the film in Cannes with eOne already snapping up distribution rights in U.K., Canada, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. CAA packaged the project and is repping domestic rights.
Capri is described as a two-hander action comedy, in the vein of the well-regarded 1988 chase comedy Midnight Run, and centers on an ex-FBI agent and an ex-mob lawyer in the witness protection program having to put aside their petty rivalry on the golf course to fend off a mob hit.
A summer shoot in New Mexico is being eyed.
Capri will mark a return to the big-screen for Shelton, who has not written nor directed a feature since 2003’s Hollywood Homicide. He was nominated for an Oscar for writing the script for Bull Durham, the 1989 sports romantic-comedy classic that starred Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon. Shelton has adapted the movie for the stage as a musical, which is eyeing a Broadway debut for 2017.
Freeman will be seen in Lionsgate’s Now You See Me 2 and MGM’s Ben-Hur this summer while Jones, who appeared in Criminal earlier this year, appears with Matt Damon and Alicia Vikander in Jason Bourne, which opens July 29.
Richards’ Endurance, which has a strategic partnership with eOne, is producing and co-financing the Watergate drama film Felt, starring Liam Neeson and Diane Lane.
Freeman and Jones are both repped by CAA. Shelton is repped by Oasis Media Group.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
