Having previously collaborated on the Oscar-winning script for Good Will Hunting, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are set to team-up again.
The currently untitled film will be based on the story of the recently apprehended Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger who spent the last sixteen years at large, twelve of those on the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.
Matt Damon, who is originally from Greater Boston, has already acted alongside a fictional impression of Bulger.
The Departed , Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning crime thriller, starred Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello, a figure based on Bulger and his crimes.
Terence Winter, famous for writing episodes of The Sopranos as well as recent HBO series Boardwalk Empire , will pen the script.
Ben Affleck is set to take the directorial reigns, with Damon playing Bulger and Affleck’s brother Casey – who was in Ben's first Boston crime flick, the incredible Gone Baby Gone – in a supporting role.
James Joseph “Whitey” Bulger’s story is a remarkable one: After rising to the top of criminal underworld in the early ‘70s, Federal Prosecutors began a process to indict the kingpin in 1994, forcing him to flee Boston and go into hiding.
Now, after being apprehended in Santa Monica, he is facing a staggering charge of nineteen murders.
Talking to GQ magazine, Damon stated that he was “really excited” about doing the movie and that “the sooner it’s announced the better.”
Affleck claimed “Matt and I have been looking for something to do together for some time,” and that the pair had “heard about Whitey Bulger since we were kids.”
Apparently, two other films about the Boston gangster are also in development. But Damon is confident that “everyone else will back off.”
Pearl Street Films will produce the picture. The project is expected to get underway next year.
