Reeves shoots, scores
Pic based on Hunter novel
"Shooter" will be produced by Mark Johnson, Barry Levinson and Erwin Stoff, who is Reeves' manager at 3 Arts Entertainment.
The film is based on "Point of Impact," a novel by Stephen Hunter, film critic for the Washington Post. It originated with Johnson and Levinson when they worked together at Baltimore Films, and when Hunter was a critic with the Baltimore Sun. First adapted by Nick Kazan, it was once skedded as a starring vehicle for Robert Redford, but the trigger never got pulled.
Now "Shooter" is being targeted for a start date late in the year, after Reeves finishes starring for director Howard Deutch in the Warner Bros. gridiron film "The Replacements."
In "Shooter," Reeves will play Bobby Lee Swaggart, a master sniper who exiled himself to the Arkansas hills after mistakenly causing the death of an innocent person. Finally lured out of his reclusive life to help prevent an assassination, he gets double-crossed, leaving him hunted for murder and trying to guess who sold him out and why.
The Swaggart character figures in a three-book series that Hunter wrote. "Point of Impact" was first published by Bantam in 1993.
Producers and studio will move quickly to secure an A-list director, and Paramount might secure a foreign partner as it formulates its budget.
Reeves, who first showed himself to be a bankable leading man with "Speed," has made more right moves than wrong, and his salary continues to rise. He sidestepped the "Speed 2" debacle for "The Devil's Advocate," then moved to his current success in "The Matrix," the year's top-grossing film to date.
He got paid $12.5 million against 12.5% of the gross for "The Replacements" and is looking at a strong raise in the wake of "Matrix."
Reeves is repped by CAA and managed by Stoff of 3 Arts.
