Casey Affleck is set to produce and star in Boston Strong, the story which chronicles the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, Variety reports. Affleck, a Boston local, is producing from a script by Eric Johnson and Paul Tamasy, the same writers who penned 2010’s The Fighter, another real life Boston-set story.
The script is based off the Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge book of the same name, and it focuses specifically on Boston’s response to the marathon tragedy, along with the hunt to capture the two men allegedly responsible for the bombings.
For Affleck, who is producing along with John Ridley (writer and director of Jimi: All Is By My Side), the project hits home in more ways than one. Apart from being a Boston product, Affleck also graduated from Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the same high school that the alleged suspects, Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, graduated from.
Another Casey Sherman book, The Finest Hours: The True Story Behind the US Coast Guard’s Most Daring Rescue, has been adapted for the screen by Johnson and Tamasy. That film, going by the shortened The Finest Hours, also stars Affleck and is currently filming in Boston. The other half of the Boston Strong writing team, Dave Wedge, was one of the journalists who covered the bombings for the Boston Herald.
Johnson and Tamasy had originally tried to develop Boston Strong as a miniseries along with EOne Television, but those plans fell through earlier in the year. With Affleck attached, the producers will take the project out to studios next.
Casey Affleck will be seen in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar later this year.
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