Casey Affleck To Lead Joe Wright’s Adaptation ‘Stoner’
Based on the above headline, you’ve probably got a bunch of ideas for what a movie called Stoner starring Casey Affleck looks like. I regret to inform you that the Manchester By the Sea actor’s latest project will not find him smoking joints on the couch à la True Romance Brad Pitt. The new Joe Wright film doesn’t follow Affleck as a weed delivery guy who bikes across Brooklyn to bring Park Slope parents nuggets of marijuana. And despite that scraggly beard he maintained all awards season, the Oscar winner won’t play a bearded pothead living in his mother’s basement, but a farmer-turned-academic.
Stoner is an adaptation of the 1965 John Williams novel of the same name, which follows William Stoner, a poor Missouri farmer who falls in love with literature. Cohen Media Group (CMG), Film4, and Blumhouse announced the film on Tuesday (via Indiewire), which will be directed by Joe Wright with a script from Australian playwright and screenwriter Andrew Bovell. Affleck will play the titular scholar who encounters a series of disappointments on his journey through academia.
But before Affleck gets his stoner on, he has a few other projects on the way. His third film with A Ghost Story director David Lowery, Old Man and the Gun, wrapped production earlier this summer, and there’s the upcoming Light of My Life, which he directs and stars in. And there’s still that Lewis and Clark miniseries up in the air. Joe Wright in the mean time has his Winston Churchill biopic, Darkest Hour, hitting the festival circuit this fall.