Source: Variety
George Clooney has committed to direct The Belmont Boys, a heist movie that will reteam him with Oceans 13 producer Jerry Weintraub and screenwriters Brian Koppelman and David Levien.
Variety is also reporting that Clooney will helm the movie after starring in White Jazz, the Warner Independent Pictures adaptation of the James Ellroy novel, which Clooney and Smoke House partner Grant Heslov have boarded as producers. Matthew Carnahan wrote the script.
In White Jazz, Clooney will play a dirty LAPD vice squad lieutenant whose mastery at skirting the rules gets tested when he’s set up by his crooked bosses to be the fall guy for a murder. The movie will begin production in early 2008.
The Belmont Boys follows seven thieves who first meet at the horse track and nearly pull off the job of a lifetime. They reunite 30 years later to finish what they started. The film will shoot in the U.S. and Europe.
Both projects have to wait until 2008 because Clooney is booked solid.
He will next direct and will star with Renée Zellweger in Leatherheads, the Universal romantic comedy that is set in the backdrop of ’20s pro football. He’ll follow later next year with the Focus/Working Title pic Burn After Reading, a film that re-teams Clooney with Joel and Ethan Coen, with whom he made Intolerable Cruelty and O Brother, Where Art Thou?
