Costner, Jones are 'Company Men'

Actors join independent drama starring Affleck

By MICHAEL FLEMING

Costner

Jones

Kevin Costner and Tommy Lee Jones are set to star in "The Company Men," an independently financed drama about the impact that a corporate downsizing has on both its casualties and survivors. They join Ben Affleck, who was set last fall.

John Wells wrote the script and will direct. Production begins in April in Boston.

Wells, Claire Rudnick Polstein and Paula Weinstein are producing. Barbara Hall is exec producer.

Affleck plays a corporate hotshot whose Porsche and six-figure salary vanish after he gets laid off. Costner plays his brother-in-law, a salt-of-the-earth drywall installer who gives him a construction job.

Jones plays a senior partner in the firm, a principled man who struggles with the greedy actions of his partners.

Costner takes the role as he works to set up "The One," a film he will direct from a script he penned with "Dances With Wolves" writer Michael Blake, based on an idea by Blake. Costner will star as a free-spirited man who inherits $3 billion, leading him on an adventure and an eventual collision with pirates in the Cayman Islands.

Jones is working on a directing project as well, talking to financiers about "Islands in the Stream," an adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway tale that Jones wrote, will direct, star in and produce through his Javelina Film Co. banner.