Affleck
Ben Affleck is set to star in an adaptation of Josephine Tey's novel "Brat Farrar" for Universal Pictures. "Fight Club" scribe Jim Uhls is on board to pen the script.
Tome, adapted into U's 1963 release "Paranoiac," is a twisting tale following siblings of an old-money family fighting for the inheritance from their recently deceased father.
Affleck's Live Planet partners Sean Bailey and Chris Moore are producing, with Jeff Fiskin exec producing. Producer Chuck Weinstock is also on board.
Affleck will play the eldest brother -- thought to have died as a boy years earlier -- who surprises his family when he shows up to collect the fortune.
With his position as heir threatened, the younger brother in the clan has reasons, which he can't reveal, to doubt the veracity of the claim.
Though Live Planet is based at Disney, Bailey first pitched the idea of remaking the film to U because the studio has remake and lit rights for the pic.
The Uhls script will hew closer to the "Brat Farrar" novel than the "Paranoiac" pic.
U execs Scott Stuber, Damien Saccani and Jeffrey Kirschenbaum are overseeing the project.
Affleck's next project is college hoops drama "Glory Road" for producer Jerry Bruckheimer at Disney. He will next be seen in Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl," which Miramax is set to unspool March 19, and DreamWorks' "Surviving Christmas," set for a November release.
Last fall Uhls co-founded Peculiar Films, which is readying his script "Hard Hearts" for production with partner Hyde Entertainment. Shingle is also developing "Fool That I Am," written by Uhls and Knarik Koop.
Other Uhls projects in the works include "Flicker" for Darren Aronofsky at New Regency and "Gideon's Force" for Imagine Entertainment at Warner Bros.
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